


Apocalypse Z

by Baylor



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Brains, Gen, Road Trips, Team Free Will, Zombie Apocalypse, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-18
Updated: 2013-08-18
Packaged: 2017-12-23 22:51:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 21,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/932024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Baylor/pseuds/Baylor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's the zombie apocalypse, and Dean, Sam and Castiel are just trying to get to Bobby's in one piece. And not undead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Diverges from canon in Season 4 after "My Bloody Valentine". No relation to the zombies in "Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid". Takes place in the summer of 2010. 
> 
> Podfic available [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/941246).

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.” – Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Jane Austen & Seth Grahame-Smith

 

Sam was shoulders-deep in the now-open grave, surrounded by the smell of fresh earth and dankness and his own sweat, intent on getting through the last half-foot of dirt to the grave of Arthur Oberlin, who had reacted to the renovation of his law office by driving letter openers and staplers into the soft flesh of its new tenants, when he heard a moan from topside. 

“What?” he grunted at Dean, whose turn it was to hold the light, just as Dean said, “Did you hear something?”

Sam stopped digging and leaned on the shovel. He looked up and could see Dean at the edge of the grave, head tilted to listen. The night was quiet. Far away, a car engine droned.

“Huh,” Dean said, and shrugged. Sam wiped his forehead with the back of his hand and got back to digging. 

Arthur was ablaze in his coffin when they heard it again.

“That was definitely a moan,” Sam said, swiveling around to survey the cemetery. Dean switched the flashlight back on to give them more illumination than just the grave fire and swung it in a slow arc until it picked up movement near a crypt. 

“Hello?” Sam called, because the shape was human, and it was stumbling. “Are you all right?”

Another low moan floated over to them. Sam picked up the salt-loaded shotgun from the ground, and Dean pulled his handgun out from the back of his jeans. Dean holding the flashlight steady, they slowly approached.

The figure had stopped with its back to them, but now they could see that it was a woman. She was wearing tennis shoes and a plain blue dress, some kind of service worker uniform, with a dirty jeans jacket over it. Her brown hair was matted with dirt and leaves. She was round-shouldered, hunched over with her arms hanging limply at her sides. 

“You okay, lady?” Dean asked. “You hurt?”

Slowly, the woman turned around. Her eyes were vacant, her face slack and unintelligent. A fine line of drool trailed from her open mouth.

Dean let out a huff of breath, not quite a laugh. “Man, she is hammered,” he said. 

Sam grimaced at him, because it wasn’t really funny, wandering a graveyard too drunk to speak or keep a straight line. 

“You shouldn’t be out here,” Sam told her. “Let us walk you to the sidewalk, call you a cab.”

The woman took a few hesitant, shuffling steps toward them and said, “Nrghhhh.”

“Hey, I think she likes you, Sammy,” Dean said, and grinned at him. 

“Shut up,” Sam said, because his brother was a horse’s ass. He handed Dean the shotgun and stepped toward the woman, holding out an arm.

“Here, careful, don’t fall,” he cautioned, reaching for her elbow. She gripped his arm hard and fell against him, and man, did she stink. She smelled like she’d been sleeping in a dumpster. 

“Nrghhhhh,” the woman said again, more insistently, and brought her free hand up to Sam’s hair, yanking to bring his face down to hers.

“Whoa!” Sam yelled, just as Dean laughed and said, “Told ya!”

“Shut up!” Sam snapped to Dean, and then said to the woman (whose breath smelled like she had a strict dietary requirement of rotten meat), “Lady, let me go.”

Instead, she stood on her toes and pressed herself closer, trying to get her mouth to his. Sam pulled back, but she had him in a fierce hold and wasn’t giving him up. “Come on,” Sam said impatiently. “Let go,” and he gave her a little push.

She snarled at him, a phlegmy, guttural noise. “Hey,” he heard Dean bark behind him. “The good meat’s back here, lady. Give it a rest.”

Sam managed to get her hand off of his arm but she had a death-grip on his hair. He was so not taking this to mean that Dean was right about cutting his hair. He gave her another little push, but she dragged him back with her, and he stumbled forward in a sharp pitch.

There was a harsh snapping noise, and he jerked back abruptly, hard enough to get out of her grip, yelping as a chunk of his hair came out. 

“Did you just try to bite me?” he said in disbelief in the woman, who stood there dumbly, Sam’s hair still clenched in her fingers. 

“Gross,” Dean said. “Forget her. Let’s cover up Arthur and get out of here. She can find her own way home.”

“Yeah,” Sam said, rubbing at his stinging scalp. 

Except she followed them, shuffling slowly after them to Arthur’s grave and drooling dumbstruck over the dwindling fire. 

“People,” Sam heard Dean mutter as he climbed out of the grave from closing the coffin. 

“Ignore her,” Sam told him. “She’s going to think this was some kind of acid-trip dream in the morning.”

“I doubt she’s got enough brain cells left to form that thought,” Dean said, and they started filling the grave. Across it, the woman was staring at them intently. They pitched dirt into the grave and stonily refused to look at her. Sam could still smell her rotten-meat breath on him.

“Ngawwwwwwww!” she yelled suddenly, and they both looked up in disbelief as she shuffled forward, right into the open grave, their yelled warning too late.

“What the fuck!” Dean shouted. “Seriously?”

Sam grabbed the flashlight from the ground and pointed it into the grave. “Hey, are you …” His voice trailed off. One of her legs was bent at an impossible angle underneath her and her neck was twisted so that her lifeless eyes stared right at them over her shoulder.

“Aw, crap,” Dean said, and Sam felt like echoing the sentiment, because what were they supposed to do with this? No, Officer, we didn’t do anything to her, she just fell into the grave we were filling back in. Oh, well, because we dug it up earlier and torched the corpse inside. You know, Thursday.

Dean sniffed. “We could –“ 

“We are not leaving her in there and just filling it in, Dean,” Sam sniped. “She could have a family, or a job, or – we’re just not.”

Dean sighed and wiped a hand over his face. “Yeah,” he agreed. “I know. It’s just – she’s already in there. Doesn’t it count as one of those three Rs you’re always yelling about? Reuse, maybe?”

The corners of Sam’s mouth twitched against his will. “Reduce, maybe. Two for one.”

Dean laughed, and Sam shook his head ruefully. The woman said, “Annnnwwww!” 

They did not scream, because the Winchesters are demon-hunters.

The woman pushed herself up on her arms and turned her head back. It lolled to one side, like her broken neck wouldn’t support it properly. She tried to get her legs back under her, but kept failing, so she started grabbing at the dirt walls of the grave, trying to pull herself up.

“Dude,” Dean said, “is that a zombie?”

“I think so,” Sam said. “Huh.”

Sam went back to the Impala and returned with a stake, an ax, and the Colt. “What do you think?” he asked Dean, who was still staring into the grave in disbelief. The woman had found a tree root to use as a handhold and was now upright, her vacant face turned up to them.

“This is no raise-you-from-your-grave zombie,” Dean speculated. “She’s not dressed for a funeral. I’m thinking stake her to her own grave is out.”

“Colt will work no matter what,” Sam said, but they hated to waste the bullets. 

“Keep it in reserve,” Dean said, and hefted the ax. “Let’s do this Romero style.”

Sam peered doubtfully into the grave. “You gonna get down there with her? Tight quarters for fighting.”

“She moves slow,” Dean said, and dropped into the grave. The woman promptly let go of the tree root to reach for him and fell over on her face. “And she’s stupid,” Dean called up to Sam, then leaned over her, raised the ax, and took her head off in two quick, brutal blows.

Instead of spraying like Sam would have expected, her blood dripped slowly out of the wound in a thick, sticky river. 

“Gross,” Dean said, and tossed up the ax before crawling out of the grave. 

Sam was appraising the cemetery, but all was still and quiet. He looked at Dean and raised his eyebrows. Dean shrugged and held out his open palms. 

“Huh,” Sam said, then grabbed the shovel. Reduce it was.

* * *

They stayed in town long enough to make sure Arthur was done assaulting people with office equipment (which was more dangerous than it sounded given that he had killed one guy via strangulation with a tie in the paper shredder and another with a water cooler to the head). Sam bought the local paper but could find no mention of the woman there or on the Internet. 

“We’re just weird magnets now, Sam,” Dean said to him around a mouthful of sandwich as they sat outside Oberlin Rutherford & Drago. “If there’s something spooky going on anywhere in our vicinity, it comes right for us.”

Sam frowned. “It still doesn’t explain where she came from,” he said. “People don’t just spontaneously turn into zombies.”

Dean shrugged. “They’re all fine,” he said, and waved out the window. 

Sam watched the flow of pedestrian traffic. No one was moaning or stumbling or rotting, which did indeed indicate that a zombie outbreak was not in the works. And the world was weird these days. It was End Days, and even if most people didn’t realize it yet, every supernatural thing on the planet sure the hell did, and they were all up and moving around, trying to get some last licks in before the big showdown.

Across the street, two young women in sundresses got off the city bus and stood at the corner, talking animatedly, broad smiles on their faces. Sam watched as they laughed and hugged goodbye before walking separate ways. One of them turned and shouted something to her friend, who laughed and flapped a hand behind her.

He’d like, Sam thought, to get in some last licks himself before the end.

* * *

“Make sure that you do not just go out and start decapitating zombies left and right.” – South Park, “Pink Eye”

 

There was a coven of witches just outside Athens, Georgia, who were covering people in boils and gardens in locusts, so despite the abnormally grueling heat baking the nation, they went down South. Dean, whose patience with witches wore thinner with each year, vigorously advocated for a permanent, bullet-shaped solution to the problem, but Sam, still smarting over raising the devil and going evil and all, talked him into destroying the Black Altar and providing a sternly worded lecture.

Sometime after 2 a.m., the loud, cranky air conditioner let out an enormous whoof! and died, taking the room from uncomfortably warm to unbearably smothering. They opened the windows and door (careful to replace the salt line) and lay on the sticky coverlets in their underwear. Sam finally turned CNN on mute and stared blankly at the screen. Dean squirmed and muttered in his bed, then got up, fished change out of his jeans on the floor, and stalked out of the room and onto the sidewalk in nothing but a pair of boxer briefs. 

The CNN reporter was standing in front of a raging city fire. The tagline said Yuba City, California, and Sam was trying to remember if he knew where that was. The reporter started interviewing a man wearing glasses and scrubs.

Dean stalked back in. “Dude,” he said, “there’s another fucking zombie by the soda machine.”

“Another zombie?” Sam asked. He was too hot to lift his head.

“Like the one in Iowa,” Dean insisted. He zipped open the weapons duffle and rooted around until he found the ax. “Remember? In the graveyard? Your special girlfriend?”

“I remember,” Sam said, but didn’t get up. “That was three weeks and many hundred miles ago.”

Dean huffed. “Well, now there’s another one,” he declared, and went back outside. 

Sam sighed. He sat up and pulled on a t-shirt. He debated the jeans but decided his boxers would do. He snagged a shotgun and went outside. 

In front of the brightly glowing machine that declared COLD COLA! in eye-scalding blue, Dean was swinging the ax into the side of the zombie’s head. The zombie, an older guy in khaki pants, a short-sleeved white button-down and a tie, fell to the ground, looking almost surprised. He let out a moan that was truncated by Dean’s ax coming down on his neck and severing his larynx from his head. 

“See!” Dean groused at Sam with great umbrage. “Another fucking zombie!” Then he leaned over the headless corpse, plunked change into the machine, and retrieved his promised COLD COLA! 

Sam just didn’t know how to express how bizarre his life was sometimes.

Instead of trying, he went back to the room and snagged one of the putrid yellow coverlets, which he and Dean then used to roll up the de-animated zombie and carry it to the dumpster. 

“It’s going to stink something terrible in this heat,” Sam grunted as they hefted it up over the lip of the bin.

“Could burn it,” Dean replied, panting. 

Given that everything about “Cozy Peaches Quarters,” from the now-defunct air conditioner to the sparks the peach on the sign periodically gave off screamed fire hazard, Sam thought that wasn’t prudent. And, as Dean so eloquently argued, they didn’t bring the zombie here, they just took care of the problem when it presented. Also, as Dean continued to eloquently argue, it was ball-sweatingly hot and did they really want to lug that thing around in the trunk looking for a likely spot to dig a hole and plant it?

No, Sam decided, he really didn’t want to do that. Especially not in their current attire, which, fortunately, no one seemed to have noticed. Of course, no one seemed to have noticed them decapitating a zombie and disposing of its remains either. 

Instead, Sam took Dean up on his offer of a COLD COLA!, went back to the room, and flopped back down on his bed. CNN was still on, and now a different reporter was standing in front of a massive freeway pileup. The tagline read Lebanon, Vermont. 

Despite the heat and the stink of zombie and Dean now eating pork rinds half-naked on the other bed, Sam fell asleep.

* * *

CNN was still on in the morning, though Dean was now snoring gently, the bag of pork rinds on his chest rising and falling with each breath. The heat of the day was already coming through the still-open door. Sam checked the salt line, then went to take a shower. Not even the water was cool; he had to settle for lukewarm. 

When he came out of the room, feeling more human in clean clothing, CNN was showing footage of a wild-eyed woman with blood on her shirt clutching her children to her ample bosom and sobbing. The screen cut to one of the children, a boy of about 10, being interviewed. Sam turned the volume up a few notches and heard the boy say, “It was almost like Grandpa wanted to eat us up, the way he was drooling and chomping his teeth.” The screen cut back to a reporter, who said, “There you have it, Howard, a bizarre family tragedy in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.”

Sam was hoping for more, but instead they switched to a story about regulation of credit card interest rates. He found his shoes, socks and wallet, then snagged Dean’s keys, the laptop and his phone. He shut the door on Dean and his pork rinds when he left.

Even hick towns had a Starbucks with wifi these days, and it was gloriously air conditioned. Sam got a skinny soy latte with an extra shot and some kind of fruit and yogurt mix, then grabbed a tiny table by the window and flipped on the laptop. 

CNN.com said the bizarre family tragedy in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, began when the family’s grandfather fell ill with flu-like symptoms a few days before. The mother and children had come home from the store to find him unconscious and barely breathing, and had called 9-1-1 for an ambulance. When the mother was on the phone with the dispatcher, one of the children ran in crying to say that Grandpa was dead. 

The ambulance call was de-prioritized, and the family was still waiting some 40 minutes later when Grandpa staggered into the kitchen, grabbed one of the children and tried to bite him. The mother, screaming, grabbed a broom and beat her father-in-law off. He had turned on her, knocked her down and climbed on top of her, which is when the father came home, grabbed the shotgun and blew Grandpa’s head off.

The county ME said the family had most likely been mistaken about the old man being dead, and then he had attacked in the throes of feverish delirium. Which sounded plausible, except that Sam had come across two zombies in the past three weeks.

He could find no other news accounts that specifically said zombie, and while there was more than the usual share of bad news nation and worldwide, that had been true ever since the last seal was broken. 

Sam drummed his fingers on the table and finished his skinny soy latte with an extra shot and picked up his phone.

“Yes,” the angel said. He sounded annoyed. He always sounded annoyed. Sam would take that personally (given, once again, the whole raising the devil and turning evil thing), except that the angel also always sounded annoyed at Dean, despite the fact that he couldn’t take his doe-eyed stare off of Dean whenever they were in a room together. 

“Hi, Cas,” Sam said politely, trying to teach through example. “I was wondering if you’d come across any zombies lately.”

There was silence on the other end of the phone. “I cannot tell when you are … kidding,” Castiel finally said, stiffly. 

“I’m not,” Sam reassured him. “We were doing a routine salt-and-burn a few weeks ago and out of nowhere, this zombie wandered into the graveyard. Then last night Dean killed one by the soda machine. And today I found some weird news reports, could be zombies, could just be weird. So I was wondering if you’d heard anything, if we should be looking for a pattern.”

“I have not come across any zombies,” Castiel answered. “However, I will be alert to any possible zombie activity and report it to you. Please keep me advised.”

“Sure thing,” Sam said, and started to add, “Thanks, Cas,” but the angel had hung up.

Sam sighed. He ate his yogurt. 

* * *

Dean wanted to check out a possible werewolf pack in Arkansas, and Sam wanted to hit one of their favorite highly illegal arms dealers in Mississippi, so they headed west, the Impala’s windows rolled down to at least move the air around a little. They had passed into Alabama when Dean decided it was time for gas and slushees and got off the highway to hit a gas station.

Sam bought them both large shushes (cherry for Dean, grape for Sam), beef jerky and Snickers, dumped everything in the front seat while Dean groused at him to be careful, and then went around the side of the building to the restroom. The door was jammed and wouldn’t budge even after Sam put his shoulder into it. 

Something inside thumped against the door and let out an earnest moan. 

Sam pulled back and stood staring at the door. A trickle of sweat rolled out of his hair and down into his ear, and he shook his head impatiently. 

Whatever was in the restroom thumped against the door and moaned again.

Sam turned on his heel and went back to the Impala. He popped the trunk and began rifling through the weapons locker.

“Whaddya doing?” Dean asked, squinting at him over the gas handle. 

Sam pulled the ax out and stalked back around to the side of the building. He could feel Dean staring after him and the clerk peering out the window.

He used the dull edge of the ax to whack the handle off, then slammed the door open. It crashed into the shape behind it, knocking it over. 

It looked kind of like Bobby, Sam thought – checked shirt, trucker hat, beard. He brought the ax down with brutal efficiency before the zombie could get back on its feet.

“Dude,” Dean said over his shoulder, and then, “Dude!” from the clerk, behind Dean. 

Sam stalked past both of them. He used a towel in the trunk to clean off the ax and put it back in its spot, then got back in the passenger seat. Dean went into the store with the clerk, came out alone and got in the driver’s seat. 

“You still gotta pee?” Dean asked.

“I’m good,” Sam said, and Dean started the engine. 

* * *

At the arms dealer, they decided, with unspoken agreement, to stock up on shotguns, rounds, and sharp instruments. Elgin didn’t take credit, so they emptied out their wallets and kept adding to their shopping list until Elgin said they were out of funds.

“You boys know somethin’ I don’t?” Elgin asked as he helped them load the Impala.

Sam and Dean glanced at each other. “It’s a dangerous world,” Sam finally said, and Dean nodded in agreement. 

Back in the car, Dean pulled out his phone. Sam shot him a querying look as he dialed.

“Thought of something,” Dean said. “Somebody who might know something we don’t.” He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, and Sam could faintly hear someone’s voicemail picking up.

“Hey, Chuck, it’s Dean,” Dean said. “We’ve been running into some strange stuff lately, some, uh, zombie-like stuff, and just wondered if there was anything we should know about. You know, visions of planetary destruction and brain harvesting. Stuff like that. Let us know.” He hung up.

“Cas didn’t know anything,” Sam supplied, and Dean shot him a startled look.

“You called Cas?” he demanded. “When? About what?”

Sam rolled his eyes. “This morning, before you were up. Just wondered if he’d seen any zombie activity. He said no, that he’d keep an eye out.”

“You called the angel to ask him about zombies?” Dean asked, pissy. “And you didn’t think to check with me first?”

Sam leaned his head against the seat. “Team Free Will, remember? I’m allowed to talk to your special angel friend, Dean.”

Dean sputtered, completely without his words in his indignation. “He’s not … special,” he finally said, scowling, and slammed the Impala into gear before peeling away.

* * *

They were almost to Arkansas when Sam refused to listen to Poison’s Greatest Hits one more time and turned on the radio to a report of a new strain of rabies affecting humans in Florida. People were being asked to avoid anyone acting erratically and notify the authorities. 

Dean pulled the Impala into a highway turnaround and headed toward Maryland.

* * *

Somewhere in Virginia the next day, Castiel appeared in the back seat and Dean nearly ran them off the road. He righted the wheel and then cursed for a solid three minutes.

“Hello, Dean,” Castiel said when Dean paused. “Hello, Sam.”

“Hey, Cas,” Sam said, and twisted in his seat. “We had another zombie yesterday, and now a news report about people being infected with rabies.”

Castiel nodded gravely. It made Sam even hotter to see him there in the suit and trenchcoat with the heat coming off the leather seats, but Castiel looked, as always, perfectly comfortable. 

“I have found similar reports of possible zombie activity across the globe since we spoke,” he said. “I have been unable to track its source. Perhaps Lucifer has unleashed Pestilence and this is the form he is taking.”

“Zombies?” Dean said. “Revelation was talking about zombies?”

“It would be a plague of great terror and destructiveness across the lands,” Castiel said with assurance. “From my understanding of zombies.” 

Dean gave him a narrow-eyed look in the rearview mirror. “How did you find us?” he grumbled.

“Sam responded to my text message,” Castiel said, and looked out the window. “Where are you going?”

“Oh, so now you guys are text messaging?” Dean said, looking at Sam menacingly. Sam managed not to smile. 

“We’re going to see Chuck,” Sam answered. “Thought he might have had some visions about what’s going on.”

“The prophet,” Castiel rumbled deeply. “A wise course of action. I will meet you there.” And he was gone.

They tore down the highway in silence. Eventually, Dean muttered sullenly, “Texting,” and then subsided. 

Sam turned his head so Dean couldn’t see his smile.

* * *

It was dusk when they arrived. Becky’s apartment was in one of those complexes where everything looked the same, and Dean drove them around for 15 minutes before he found the right building. 

A large pickup with a covered bed was in front, its door down. They paused and looked inside. It was nearly full of … Ensure. And toilet paper. And canned goods. 

“Huh,” Dean said. 

“It appears Chuck and Becky are fortifying for upcoming trials,” Castiel said, directly behind them, and the brothers jumped. 

“Yeah,” Dean said, catching his breath. “And that they are getting the hell out of Dodge.”

Castiel frowned. “This is not a positive portent.”

“Ya think?” Dean asked.

“I do,” Castiel confirmed, staring solemnly into Dean’s eyes. Dean returned the look. Sam shifted awkwardly. He guessed they were making up over the text-message thing.

Someone coughed. “Hi, guys.”

Chuck was standing on the sidewalk, a box of evaporated milk in his arms. “Can I just …” He moved clumsily around them and put the box in the back of the truck.

“Hey, Chuck,” Dean said. “Anything you feel like sharing?”

Chuck looked around nervously. “The thing is, Becky says –“

“Oh. My. God!” Becky said, appearing out of the building and throwing her arms around Sam. “Oh, it is so good to see you. You look so … fit.” She slid her hands down to Sam’s arms and squeezed. 

“Hi, Becky,” Sam said stiffly. She pulled her hands away and stepped back.

“Sorry,” she said. “I was just so surprised to see you.” She glanced at Dean and Castiel. “All of you, of course, welcome!”

“So, um, care to fill us in?” Sam said, and gestured to the truck.

Chuck looked miserably at Becky, who smiled brightly at them and said, “No. Absolutely not.”

“Pardon?” Dean asked. 

Becky shook her head emphatically. “It is too dangerous for Chuck to share his prophetic visions with you,” she said. “I mean, look what happened after I told you about the Colt. Poor Ellen and Jo! But they were so brave!” She teared up and sniffled, then reached out to give Sam’s hand a squeeze. “And then it didn’t even work. I never should have told you, and I am so, so sorry, and it will never happen again. Right, Chuck?”

Chuck gave them a shamed look. “Right, sweetie,” he said, then added, “She was really upset.”

“We were really upset, Chuck,” Becky snapped, then abruptly smiled sweetly again. “But listen, everything is going to work out. Trust us. And I’m so glad we got the chance to say goodbye.” She gave Sam another hug, this one slightly damp, then went over to the passenger door. She paused to give them all one last, lingering, worshipful look before climbing inside.

Chuck jammed his hands in his jeans pockets. 

“Seriously?” Dean asked in disbelief.

“She was really upset,” Chuck said emphatically. “But, listen, guys, it might be rough for a while, but it’s all going to work out. And, Cas?”

“Yes,” the angel said intently. 

“Hang in there, buddy. You’ll get used to it,” Chuck said. “Good luck, guys.” He reached into the truck bed, pulled out a pack of toilet paper and handed it to Sam. “From me. I want you to have it. May the Force be with you.”

“Travel safe, Chuck,” Castiel replied. Chuck nodded, shut the truck bed, and got into the driver’s side. The truck pulled away.

Sam and Dean stared after it in disbelief. Finally, Dean sputtered, “Cas!”

“Yes, Dean,” Castiel answered serenely.

Dean flapped a hand at the truck dwindling into the twilight. “Do something!”

“As zombies must be destroyed by removing the head or destroying the brain, I advise that you lay down stores of sharp-edged blades, guns and ammunition,” Castiel recommended. “I will continue to look for God.”

Dean threw his hands in the air and stormed around in a circle. “Thanks, Cas,” Sam said, still holding the pack of toilet paper. 

“You are welcome, Sam,” Castiel answered. 

“All right!” Dean yelled, coming to a stop. “Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition then! It’s the zombie apocalypse!”


	2. Chapter 2

“Most people don’t believe something can happen until it already has. That’s not stupidity or weakness, that’s just human nature.” – World War Z, Max Brooks

 

The zombie apocalypse didn’t seem all that imminent, and they were hungry and tired, so they got a room, some pizza and some beers. The room was blissfully air-conditioned. Castiel declined pizza, beer and rest and said that he would remain in close contact with them, “least you need assistance against the rising hordes of living dead” before disappearing. 

The original The Hills Have Eyes was on tv. They finished off the pizza and lay down on the beds, beer cans balanced on their chests. 

“Do you think it’s going to be all Dawn of the Dead, with people getting torn apart and eaten alive, or more Shaun of the Dead, where we’ll come up with a bunch of reality shows for zombies?” Dean asked after a while. 

Sam grunted. “Night of the Living Dead,” he answered. “We’re going to make it through to morning only to get shot by the army.”

Dean sighed. “Sounds about right,” he said.

* * *

They checked out the window as soon as they got up, but there was only a drunk passed out in his haphazardly parked car. 

“Clear on zombie activity,” Dean declared, and Sam could hear the disappointment in his voice. 

He went to take a shower and when he came out, Dean had his phone to his ear. “Well, of course I don’t think that!” he was yelling, and someone on the other end was yelling right back. 

Sam dumped out his duffle bag and started sorting his clothes. The motel had a laundry room, and Sam thought he’d get a load in before the world ended. 

“Just trying to keep you in the loop,” Dean said, somewhat quieter but still harsh, and added, “Yes. Yes, I know.” He finished with, “Fine. We’ll see you then,” and snapped the phone shut. 

Sam left the clean things on the bed and shoved everything else in the duffle. “How’s Bobby?” he asked.

“He says he can roll faster than they can stagger so get our butts out there,” Dean said sourly, then dumped his own duffle and started throwing dirty clothes in Sam’s direction.

“Dude, I’m not doing your laundry,” Sam snapped. 

“What, I have to fight the zombie apocalypse in dirty underwear?” Dean said. “I’m going to get breakfast.”

He wasn’t back when it was time to put the clothes in the dryer, so Sam called, but Dean answered and said grimly, “Not now, Sammy!” before hanging up. 

By the time the clothes were dry, Sam had given up and made himself breakfast of soda and vending machine Moon Pie. He repacked their duffels and channel surfed for any news of zombie activity. It was scant – the Florida rabies, a few random attacks – but news of increasing chaos was everywhere: highway pileups, fires, a man who shot up a funeral home with his machine gun, declaring that they were coming.

Sam didn’t look up when Dean came in. “We better get on the road,” he said, still fixed on the television, where a woman was describing how her brother-in-law had bitten both her and her Pomeranian before her sister had beaten him off with a floor lamp.

“Yeah,” Dean said.

Sam looked up and did a double-take. Dean was covered in blood. 

“I’m gonna take a shower,” Dean said, and went into the bathroom without another word. 

“Hey, where’s breakfast?” Sam shouted at the closed door. Dean threw the ruined clothes out, hitting him in the face. “Thanks,” Sam added.

* * *

They were outside Philadelphia when the radio DJ started talking about zombies.

“Can you believe it, folks?” he asked the listening audience. “He said they were zombies. And this is no crackpot talking here, this is the commander of the regional State Police post. The trooper pulls over the car and this woman is chewing – chewing – on her husband’s neck while he’s trying to get her to the hospital. When the trooper finally drags her out, she’s eaten open the artery in the neck and this guy is done for. Trooper throws the woman into the ditch, climbs back into the car to try to help the poor fella, and the next thing you know, she’s trying to eat him. He shoots her, twice, in the chest and she just keeps coming, so he finally shoots her in the head. So he’s sitting there, trying to figure out what just happened, and the husband – who was dead, mind you, bled out – suddenly comes to and starts snapping at the trooper, trying to get himself a snack. I mean, zombies? It sounds ridiculous, but I don’t know how else to describe it. Which is what the post commander said, by the way – it sounds crazy, but he doesn’t know what else it could be. I mean –“ 

Dean pushed AC/DC into the tape deck. It was still playing an hour later when they came across the accident. 

Most of the bodies were just that, bodies, some in the road, some still in the cars. Up toward the front, though, was a nasty-looking fat lady zombie in a t-shirt that read, “Proud to be an American.” She was belted in behind the wheel and a small crowd had gathered around her. They pushed their way to the front.

“Now, don’t worry, folks, she can’t get herself out,” a man with a ‘70s porn mustache was telling everyone. “Can’t get out of her seatbelt or open the door.”

Sam fished around in his wallet until he found an official-enough-looking ID and flashed it. “What happened here?” he asked. 

“Uh, Agent?” ‘70s porn mustache said. “See, this lady was driving but then she passed out or died or somethin’, and caused this big accident. Then, while people are trying to see if everyone’s all right and stuff, this little kid climbs out of the car. Everyone runs up to him to comfort him, and he starts biting hunks out of folks. Then people start running over the highway, trying to get away from him, and the accident gets bigger. We got the authorities comin’ along, but in the meantime, Proud to be an American here wakes up hungry.”

“Dude,” Dean said, and ‘70s porn mustache said, “I know, man.”

“Where’s the kid?” Sam asked. 

‘70s porn mustache shook his head. “I never saw him myself. Must have run off.”

Just then, there was a scream from the back of the crowd, which quickly began to stampede. As people shouted and ran out into the road, the shriek of metal on metal and the squealing of brakes rose up. 

Sam and Dean pushed through the crowd until they were in front of a pudgy little boy. His Clone Wars t-shirt was covered in blood, and a hunk of flesh was still caught in his teeth. He was staggering clumsily toward the few horrorstricken remaining people. 

The brothers drew their handguns. A lady screamed. Something hit Sam’s arm, and he looked down to see a small, blue-haired lady brandishing her purse against him.

“Do you intend to shoot that child?” she demanded. “Barbaric! You’re a lunatic!”

“Lady, he’s a zombie,” Dean said when Sam couldn’t come up with a response other than, “Ah.”

“Then you’re a lunatic too!” the woman yelled. “It’s that devil-music and those accursed video games!” She turned to the other bystanders. “They’re about to murder a child! Save the boy!”

The cry went up and someone grabbed for Sam’s gun. Other people ran to give cover to the boy. Sam heard one of them scream, “Oh my god, he bit me!” 

Sam wrested his gun back while Dean beat off a large, red-faced trucker. “Car!” Dean yelled, but Sam was already pushing his way back to the Impala, forging a path for them both. They broke through the crowd and into a run. Behind them, there were more screams, some of pain and some of reprobation for the child-killing lunatics. 

They dove into the Impala and Dean slammed into reverse, then shot into the grassy median to drive around the pileup. The car bounced violently and Dean was wincing and saying, “Oh, man,” when someone threw a rock that bounced off the hood and left a sizable dent. Dean gunned it, pulled back onto the highway and tore away.

They started taking the back roads.

* * *

Castiel called at nightfall and promptly appeared in the back seat. Sam was driving, but from what he could see in the rearview, the bedhead was worse than ever. There was also a streak of dirt on Castiel’s forehead. He was panting.

“You okay, Cas?” Dean asked, twisting around.

“Yes,” Castiel said, but he was a little wild-eyed. “I have found zombies on every continent except Antarctica. There were only penguins there.”

“Zombie penguins?” Dean asked hopefully, and when Castiel only stared blankly at him, he coughed and said, “Yeah. It’s all over the news now. Sam found it on NPR earlier. Seriously, NPR talking about zombies. It’s on.”

“I have found no sign of Lucifer or Pestilence, however,” Castiel said. “I will continue my endeavors. What are your plans?”

“Going to Bobby’s,” Dean said. “Away from populated areas, heavily fortified and armed.”

“A reasonable strategy,” Castiel said. “Have you encountered more undead? Have you had difficulty disposing of them?”

Dean shrugged. “There’ve been a few more. It’s not like they move fast though. Make easy targets.”

Castiel gave him a strange look. “They are not … ravenous, in your opinion?”

“Ravenous?” Dean said, and shot Sam a look. Sam looked at Castiel in the rearview again, but, as always, the angel only had eyes for his brother. “Well, they’re hungry. They’ll chomp on you if they can get you.”

“Oh,” Castiel said. “I have encountered a number that were … quite enthusiastic about the prospect of eating me.”

“Well,” Dean said with a lecherous smile, “you are a tasty treat.”

“I am not,” Castiel said with offense. 

“I just meant –“ Dean started, but Castiel cut him off with, “I will call soon for your progress,” and disappeared. 

Dean turned back around. “Touchy,” he said. 

“He looked like he was having a bad day,” Sam offered.

“Everyone’s having a bad day,” Dean pointed out, and Sam had to agree.

* * *

“Find a reliable automobile. Zombies don’t drive.” – Field Guide to the Apocalypse, Meghann Marco

 

It was slow going on the back roads. They took turns driving and sleeping. They turned north at Columbus, because they could see the glow from the fires miles away.

They were southeast of Chicago by the next afternoon, and things were getting really hairy, and without any zombies to even shoot at.

“People!” Dean said in disgust, trying to maneuver the Impala on the grassy shoulder, because the road was deadlocked. They’d caught a glimpse of the interstate a ways back and it looked even worse, like a city of vehicles. “Where do they think they’re going?”

“They’re just trying to get away, Dean,” Sam said. He could see into a mini-van. No one was in the driver’s seat, but a woman was in the passenger seat, hiding her face in a weeping toddler’s hair. A friendly looking golden lab woofed at him out the window, its tail wagging.

“Stop it,” Dean muttered. “We can’t save them. Not like this, not one at a time. We gotta get to Bobby’s, gotta make a plan, find a way.”

They passed the mini-van, pulled up beside a revving motorcycle with a sidecar. The biker gave them a thumbs-up as they passed.

The Scorpions’ “Send Me An Angel” burst out of Dean’s phone, and Sam snatched it up off the seat between them. “I’m changing that ringtone,” he informed Dean before answering it and rattling off their location.

Castiel appeared in the backseat. One of his trenchcoat sleeves was ripped. “Hello,” he said, and then did not elaborate.

“Hi, Cas,” Sam said. Dean was torn between looking at his angel in the rearview mirror and watching the road, or side of the road, as it were.

“There are more zombies today than yesterday,” Castiel finally said.

“Yeah,” Sam said. “It’s going to take forever to get to Bobby’s.”

Castiel nodded. “I will travel with you,” he said. “You may need protection.”

“Uh-huh,” Sam said.

They finally maneuvered around the worst of the traffic jam and got moving again, albeit slowly, and put in another 30 miles before Dean had to slam on the brakes to avoid a sudden and complete stop of traffic. Sam squinted down the road of stationary cars in front of them.

“What the hell …” Dean started, and then a pair of screaming teenagers thumped up against the Impala as they ran past. A man carrying a little boy was next. The child was crying in terror.

“Shit,” Sam said, because now it was a horde of people, all of them screaming and crying and running for their lives, carrying children and pets and luggage bags, weaving around cars and pushing out onto the shoulder. A man leapt onto the hood of the Impala and ran right over the top of it, clambering down the trunk and continuing down the road.

Sam and Dean opened their doors at the same time and dashed for the trunk, where they both loaded shotguns and stuffed their pockets with ammunition. Castiel blipped out of the backseat, and seconds later was back beside them.

“How many?” Dean asked grimly.

“A dozen, at least,” Castiel said. “The crowd is in a panic. They’re stampeding people further up.”

Sam grabbed his curved knife and hung it from his belt while Dean snagged a hatchet and did the same. They both took off at a dead run down the road.

Sam kept having to push people aside to move forward, the crowd growing thicker and more panicked with each step. He passed a car where a young woman sat, still seatbelted, behind the wheel, windows rolled up, holding a cat to her chest and staring at the scene around her in terrified disbelief. He passed an SUV with open doors and the sound of a baby crying pouring out of it.

Finally, he pushed through the vehicles to find an opening, hearing the moaning and snarling before he saw the zombies as he came around an overturned truck. His shotgun was up before he’d completed his turn around the vehicle, and he blew two zombies’ heads off before they even noticed him there.

Dean must have fallen behind, because there was no accompanying gunfire beside him. Sam aimed and hit another one in the neck. Gurgling, thick blood pouring down its chest, it turned toward him, staggering, and he finished it off.

Castiel appeared on the other side of the opening in the vehicles, grabbed the nearest zombie by its scruff and bashed its head into the side of a Ford 2500. Its skull actually cracked open and Castiel dropped its lifeless body, moving swiftly on to the next zombie. Sam fired twice more, sure he got one, not sure about the other, before grabbing his knife to behead a creature drawing near to his side.

The zombie staggered past him with a heartfelt, “Bwlfff!” and went right for Castiel. Sam hesitated, surprised, then grabbed the thing from behind and hacked its head off in a few brutal strokes. When he looked up, four more zombies lay dead at Castiel’s feet, and seven more had gathered around the angel. They were … slobbering. And vocalizing. Kind of like Dean at a steakhouse.

“What the fuck?” Dean said in his ear, before yelling, “Cas! Get outta there!”

Castiel bashed the head of the nearest zombie into a vehicle and then rematerialized next to the brothers. He brought two zombies, one clinging to the back of his trenchcoat, the other flat on the ground and wrapped around his ankle, with him. Dean whipped a pistol out from the back of his jeans and shot both of them in the head.

Sam put bullets in three more heads and Dean finished off the last one. They stood there, panting, listening for sounds of more undead activity, but all they could hear was the crowd, now further away, still screaming and stampeding, and the baby, still crying.

“Wow,” Dean said, looking at Castiel, “they do think you’re nummy.”

Castiel grimaced and disappeared.

Sam and Dean trudged back to the Impala. They helped up a few fallen people on the way, and carried the body of someone who had been trampled to death off to the side of the road. At the SUV, Sam climbed in and took the crying baby out of the car seat. It was wearing a yellow onesie that said, “Cutie Pie!” It quieted against his chest, seeming to feel safe again, and Sam let its warm weight fill up his hands, breathed steadily with it. Just as the Impala came into sight, a woman ran up sobbing and reached her arms out for the child. “I was trying to get her out,” she gasped. “The crowd pulled me right away, I couldn’t get back to her.”

In the end, they had to push the Impala off the road completely, and then Dean steered while Sam pushed whenever they got stuck. “You know who could help with this?” Sam yelled while they tried to get the car over the edge of a ditch. “Castiel.”

“I am here,” the angel said from beside Sam, then put his hands on the trunk and helped Sam push, the car finally clearing the obstacle.

“Thanks,” Sam said, and wiped sweat off his forehead with his arm. “Can you, uh,” he flapped a hand, not sure what word to use, “fly the car somewhere less congested?”

“No,” Castiel said, and got into the backseat. Sam sighed, and got into the passenger seat.

They went about 50 more miles, and then it was dark and traffic showed no sign of improving and Sam was starving, sweaty and cramped. They passed a little motor inn, and Dean pulled into the parking lot.

“Tell me you have a room,” Sam demanded of the clerk, leaning and sweating against the desk.

“One room,” the guy told him. “Cash only.”

Fortunately, just that morning they had gone to an ATM and emptied out every available credit card with cash advances. Sam slapped the money down and got a key. There was a gas station/restaurant beside the motor inn, and Dean got them takeout. Sam went straight for the shower, and when he came out, Dean was on his second burger and staring in rapture at the television.

“Dude,” Dean said around a mouthful. “This Air France plane just landed at JFK. Only people on it who aren’t zombies are the pilot and copilot. They locked themselves behind their terrorist-proof door while the infection spread in the fuselage. NTSB is trying to figure out how to get the pilots out.” He took a long pull of beer and then said, “And you think flying is safe.” He snorted.

Sam opened a beer and downed half of it before sitting down and grabbing a burger. Castiel stood in the middle of the room, intently watching the news report. “You staying?” Dean mumbled at him.

“Yes,” Castiel said. “It is imperative that both of you arrive safely at Bobby’s. I can resume my investigation into this outbreak after that.”

“Then sit down,” Dean said. “Stop being creepy.”

Castiel cut Dean a sideways look, then pulled out a chair and sat down. The three of them sat in silence and watched the world fall apart.

* * *

Sam woke to find the television still on, Castiel still watching it. “How are things?” he mumbled, rubbing sleep out of his eyes.

“Worse,” the angel said tersely.

Sam stood and stretched, cracking his neck. He went over to the window and found the curtain strings, knowing full well that the morning light was going to catch Dean right in his still-sleeping eyes and wake him up. He yanked and the curtains whipped open.

Five zombies were lined up at the window, their faces pressed to the glass. They groaned with enthusiasm at the sight of the room’s occupants. It was like, Sam thought, the world’s worst paparazzi.

Dean groaned. “I’m still sleeping, Sam,” he grumbled, and shoved his head under the pillow.

Sam got dressed, making as much noise as possible. He kicked Dean’s bed. “Get up,” he said. “We need to get moving, big time.” Dean shot him the finger. “Coffee?” Sam asked, and the finger came down.

“Please,” came Dean’s muffled reply.

Sam loaded the shotgun, stocked extra ammo in his pockets, and grabbed his knife. “Come with, Cas?” he asked.

“Yes,” Castiel said. He was standing in front of the window, frowning and looking at the zombies, who were climbing over each other in a vain attempt to tear the angel’s throat out.

They left the room and dispatched of the zombies before they could even get away from the window. Sam scanned the area carefully, but no more undead presented themselves, so they crossed the parking lot to the gas station/restaurant.

The door was unlocked, but the inside was deserted. The power was still on, though, so Sam let himself into the kitchen and started fresh coffee brewing. He was pulling out eggs, bacon and biscuits to make them some quick sandwiches when he heard a clatter from the aisles near the register.

“Cas?” he said, and then heard the now-unmistakable sound of zombie skull breaking open. Castiel came around to the kitchen wearing an expression of great distaste.

“It bit my ankle,” he said, indignant.

“Uh, zombie,” Sam reminded him. He set down his supplies and crouched down, pushing up Castiel’s pant leg. It looked like the zombie had taken out a hunk of flesh and sock. Sam squinted up.

“It won’t affect you, right?” he asked.

Castiel looked disdainful. “I am an angel of the Lord, Sam,” he said. “I do not get sick. This is a sickness.”

Sam nodded and stood up. “Good,” he said. “Well, heal it up and then give me a hand here.”

Dean was up and dressed when they returned, and enthusiastic about Sam’s provided breakfast. They finished eating, stripped the room of blankets and pillows, raided the store, filled spare gas containers, loaded the Impala and ventured back onto the road.

* * *

Today Dean was going for real back roads, using a compass and the instincts born of a life on the road to keep them moving west. They were forced south for most of the day in order to avoid the outpouring of people from Chicago and its suburbs, but by mid-afternoon were finally able to start veering north again. 

There were no gas stations, restaurants or other signs of life on the narrow paths that Dean was choosing. Every so often they came across another vehicle, and a couple of times, convoys of them, but Sam was willing to bet that most of the people living out here had dug in to ride this out, and the desperate refugees from the city had foolishly stuck to roads that were on the map. The radio continued to provide bad news, and sometime just after noon, the Emergency Broadcast System went off. Sam was hoping that the automated voice would tell them that zombies must be killed by removing the head or destroying the brain, but instead they were repeatedly told not to travel, to stay in their homes until the all-clear was sounded, and that help was on the way.

That’s us, Sam thought. Sorry, world.

In the back seat, Castiel’s stomach growled.

Sam turned around, and Dean looked into the rearview. “All right back there, Cas?” he asked.

“I am fine,” Castiel said peevishly.

Sam jerked his chin. “How’s the ankle?”

“I am fine,” Castiel repeated, louder, so Sam turned around and shut up. The emergency alarm continued going off, and the announcer continued telling them to stay inside. Sam fiddled with the dial and found that most stations were playing the emergency signal. He found two, however, that were praying, and when he switched to AM, Rush Limbaugh informed them that this was the result of health care reform, were they happy now?

Castiel’s stomach growled again. Sam stared straight ahead, trying to pretend he hadn’t heard it. Dean pushed Metallica in and if nothing else, it drowned out everything else.

* * *

They were going to have to get back on a main road to cross the Mississippi. After careful inspection of the map and serious debate, they settled on Niota, which would take them across to Fort Madison, Iowa. Dean came into town on sidestreets, and on seeing abandoned cars and broken storefronts on the main streets, tried to run parallel to downtown without actually going into it. 

Sam turned around to ask Cas if he could go scout ahead for the best route and then paused with his mouth open. What finally came out was, “Castiel, are you sunburned?”

“No,” Castiel said, staring stonily out the front windshield.

Dean twisted quickly to look at the angel. “Dude, you’re sweating,” Dean said, and pulled the car over. He was out in a second and in the backseat, putting the back of a hand to Castiel’s forehead.

“Shit, you’re scorching,” he said. “What is that? What’s wrong?”

“I am not scorching,” Castiel informed them. “I am an angel. I am perfectly capable of regulating my body temperature.”

“Except you’re bright red and all sweaty, man,” Dean said, and started yanking at the trenchcoat. “Take this thing off, we need to cool you down. Sam, grab him some water, would you?”

Castiel twisted out of Dean’s grasp. “Angels do not need water, Dean,” he insisted, and when Dean yanked at trenchcoat again, climbed out the other side of the car.

Sam and Dean looked at each other. Dean looked baffled, but something was clicking in Sam’s head. He got out of the car and stood beside Castiel, who looked fraught. Sam crouched down and pulled up his pant leg.

“Cas!” he yelped, because the bite looked like it was festering. It also stunk. “Why didn’t you heal it?”

Castiel looked all around, then up at the sky, as if searching for rescue. Dean got out of the backseat and crouched down beside Sam.

“What the fuck?” he yelled. “Is that where it bit you?”

Castiel tried to pull out of Sam’s hold, but Sam gave the ankle a gentle squeeze and instead he hissed in pain and shifted his weight to his other leg.

“Since when do angels hurt, Cas?” Sam asked seriously, and Castiel pressed his lips together and shook his head. “Or get hungry?”

Dean stood up, his mouth open in disbelief. “Did that zombie de-angelfy you?” he asked.

Castiel blinked, looked down. “I don’t know,” he said. “Something is wrong. I feel – I feel wretched. Trapped inside this body. The world does not speak to me. I could not heal myself.”

Sam stood up. Dean put his hands on Castiel’s shoulders. “Okay,” Dean said in that calm voice that steadied victims and witnesses. “So the zombie bite did something to you. But it didn’t zombify you. And maybe this is temporary. Damping down your powers or something. So we’ll just fix up this ankle so it heals, get some food into you so your stomach shuts up, and see what happens from there.”

Castiel shook his head, distressed. “I do not think this is temporary,” he said, but then he allowed them to take off his trenchcoat, suit jacket and tie. Sam cleaned and wrapped the ankle and Dean persuaded Castiel to eat a granola bar and drink a bottle of water.

They crossed the Mississippi at sunset in silence.


	3. Chapter 3

“Biting into heads is much harder than it looks. The skull is feisty.” – Zombie Haiku, Ryan Mecum

 

After serious debate, they decided not to travel at night, when it would be hard to spot problems – pileups, fires, zombie hordes – in the distance and thus avoid them. They moved back toward larger roads, which remained busy but were not deadlocked, and finally came past a Super 8.

The power was on, but the lobby was locked and empty. They could see lights and hear televisions in a few rooms, and finally Sam just kicked in the door of a dark and quiet room. They jogged across the street to a quiki-mart, but it was empty of people, zombies and goods, so instead Sam just went to the vending machine to get cold drinks and grabbed some of their food supplies out of the car.

When he got upstairs, Dean had Castiel pressed up against the wall and was trying to get his shirt off. Sam tried to be surprised, but found that he really wasn’t.

“Sam, come help,” Dean ordered, and Sam put out his hands, palms out. Dean scowled at him. “He needs a shower. He stinks and he’s still all overheated.”

“I do not need a shower,” Castiel answered, trying to squirm out of Dean’s grip on his collar. “Angels do not shower.”

“Well, they do when they stink,” Dean argued, and succeeded in getting the shirt off. Then he stood back and glared at Castiel. “I’m not taking your pants off for you,” he said, pointing a finger at Castiel, who was now even redder with anger.

Castiel just stared at him, lips pressed tightly together. “It will be good for you, Cas,” Sam offered. “Cool you down a little, make you feel better. Tomorrow, don’t ride around in a 100 degree car with two coats on and you won’t get so hot.”

Castiel gave Sam a betrayed, defeated look and went into the bathroom. Before he shut the door, Dean asked, “Do you know what to do in there?”

“I know how to take a shower, Dean,” Castiel answered pissily, and shut the door.

“Jeez,” Dean grumbled. “Try to help a guy.”

Sam decided it was best for everyone if he just acted like all of this was normal. It was what he usually did with Dean and Cas, anyway. He turned on the television. Some of the channels had gone to “Please Hold On” screens, but some of them were still broadcasting. Brian Williams was gravely saying, “Remember, once a person has been bitten, they must be shot in the head before they die and reanimate.”

Of all the ways he’d imagined the world ending, this one had never entered Sam’s mind.

Dean was looking hard at the bathroom door. The shower started running.

“Cas is all right, right?” he said to Sam. “He’s not going to wake up hungry and try to snack on us, is he?”

Sam kicked off his boots and peeled off his socks before flopping onto a bed. “I think he’s okay,” he said. “Not really human, so I think it’s affected him different.”

Dean flipped the channels until he came across The Daily Show. A wild-eyed Jon Stewart was showing footage of Secret Service men gunning down Joe Biden before he could take a bite out of the President.

“Do you think he’ll, you know, get better? Get angel-upped again?” Dean wondered.

Sam shrugged. “Wait and see,” he said.

They dined on convenience store food. Castiel, much less fragrant and crimson after his shower, coughed on the potato chips, which Dean then declared too salty for him, and then ate four Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. He also drank a bottled water and then claimed the armchair.

“You can have one of the beds,” Dean told him. “Sam and I will share.”

Castiel looked at Dean darkly and went back to watching television. An aerial view of downtown Los Angeles was showing, and the streets were packed with undead. Homemade signs asking for help hung from the balconies and windows of high-rises. 

On the laptop, Sam found a bombardment of YouTube videos about family members going zombie, about being trapped in homes and offices, about fighting off the undead. He also found a couple of videos made by people in their last moments, only to show them minutes later raising their heads again and wandering the room. 

Dean made them share a bed, even when Castiel refused to entertain the idea of lying down. Dean told him they would leave the other one empty, just in case. Sam turned his back to his brother and fell into an uneasy sleep.

He woke several hours later groggy and confused. The blankets were on the floor. Dean was on his stomach, sound asleep. Castiel was still watching the television, now on mute, with heavy eyes.

There was a loud thump from the wall behind the bed, then some moaning. Something crashed in the other room, and a second voice joined the moaning chorus.

Sam sighed deeply, then got up and pulled on his jeans and boots. He grabbed his handgun, then moved aside the dresser they had used to secure the motel door. Going to the next room, he kicked in the door and shot the two zombies he found there in the head. He turned off the television and pulled the door shut.

Back in their room, he pushed the dresser back into place, pulled his boots and jeans off and lay back down beside Dean. Castiel never looked up from the television.

* * *

The television was still on in the morning, only Dean was watching Green Acres and eating orange slices (the candy kind, not actual fruit). Castiel was asleep in the armchair. Sam ate a granola bar and got the tiny in-room coffee pot brewing. Dean’s episode ended, and he went to take a shower.

Sam went over to Castiel and gently tapped his shoulder. “Hey, Cas,” he said. “Wake up.”

Castiel gave a startled snort and then vivid blue eyes popped open and looked around in confusion. “Sam!” he said.

“Yep,” Sam said.

Castiel slowly straightened up in the chair. “What happened?”

“Uh, you fell asleep. Probably because you were tired.”

Castiel passed a shaky hand over his face. “It was awful,” he said.

“Well, yeah,” Sam answered, “sleeping in a chair usually is. Try the bed tonight.”

Castiel looked at him mournfully, clearing meaning something else, and Sam gave him a hesitant pat on the shoulder. “You’ll get used to it,” he said. “Or you’ll get better. Speaking of which –“ He crouched down and unwrapped the ankle. It was still a nasty human bite, but it no longer seemed headed toward infection. Sam cleaned it and rewrapped it carefully.

“Thank you, Sam,” Castiel said dolorously.

“Sure thing,” Sam answered, and gave the angel another awkward pat on the knee.

* * *

The day started out bad when they went to load the Impala and saw road blocks had been erected on the side streets. Then a military jeep went by on the main road.

“Shit,” Dean said emphatically, and it became the word of the day.

Shit, all but the main roads were blocked off, and not with pansy wooden road blocks, but with cars and military barricades. Shit, there was one slow-moving lane of traffic, all going in one direction, with the other lane reserved for the military. Along the sides of the road, people were walking. Hundreds of people, carrying small children and dragging suitcases behind them.

Shit, their phones all told them there were no circuits available. Shit, the military was broadcasting on all radio stations, telling people if they were in a secure location, to stay there. All displaced people were being routed to Mount Pleasant.

The only good news was that there were no zombies in sight.

The traffic slowed, then stopped. They idled, and Dean kept looking at the open fields on either side of them.

“Don’t,” Sam said shortly, eyeing the military truck up ahead in the road. A machine gun was mounted in the bed, and a soldier stood behind it.

“Yeah,” Dean said, then added, “Shit.”

They lurched forward a few hundred feet, and then were back to idling. A soldier stood in the other lane, looking hot and too young to buy beer. Dean leaned out the window.

“Hey, buddy,” he said. “What happens in Mount Pleasant?”

The soldier – kid – ducked his head to look at them. “They’re setting up Red Cross stations,” he said. “Get people some water, food, place to rest. Check everyone for bites. Keep them safe while we’re cleaning up the, you know.”

“Zombies,” Dean said brashly. The kid flushed.

“I know,” he said, then added in disbelief, “Shit.”

Dean nodded. “Listen, we’re trying to get to South Dakota. We’ve got family there, a place to stay.”

The kid shook his head. “You ain’t going to South Dakota, I can tell you that,” he said. “They’re trying to get everyone off the roads. That’s how it keeps spreading. If everyone would just hunker down like we been telling them, we could kill what’s still out there without new ones coming up all the time.”

“Yeah,” Dean said. “Thanks, man.”

The kid nodded politely at them, and they were able to roll another 100 feet.

“Shit,” Castiel said from the backseat.

* * *

“It’s amazing how fast the world can go from bad to total shit storm.” – Zombieland

 

It was after nightfall when they finally arrived in Mount Pleasant and were directed to the high school. Soldiers pointed the line of cars to a church parking lot and then people up the road to the school.

Dean left the engine idling and they scanned the area. Soldiers everywhere, and civilians. “What do you think?” Dean asked, watching as soldiers brought a stretcher over to a sedan and pulled a man from the backseat. Another soldier held back a screaming woman as she tried to get to him while two adolescent boys numbly watched.

“I think if we run for it, they’ll kill us,” Sam said. “But things might settle down later tonight, and once this lot is full, the soldiers will move on to the next.”

Dean looked greatly aggrieved at the abandonment of the Impala, but grudgingly agreed. They put some clean underwear and shirts into a duffle, along with some food and a couple of hidden hatchets and handguns, and joined the queue of refugees shuffling down the road.

The high school was fully lit up, as was the fenced-off parking lot, where the men and women were separated into different tents.

“Don’t take her from me,” a man begged a solider who was trying to lead his daughter away. “Daddy!” the girl wailed, reaching for him.

“Just for a few minutes, sir,” the soldier reassured him. “We’re just checking everyone for bites and then you’ll all go to the shelter.” She pulled the crying girl away.

“Shit,” Dean hissed in his ear, and Sam nodded his head.

“We gotta get out of here,” he said.

“Why?” Castiel asked, sounding annoyed.

“Because there’s a human bite mark on your ankle, Cas,” Dean said, low and urgent. “And I’m pretty sure if they find it there, they will shoot you in the head. And without your angel mojo going on, I’m also pretty sure that it’ll kill you.”

Castiel looked stunned. Sam was scanning the area, but their chance to slip away had been at the foot of the hill, when people were still milling around unorganized, and there was still cover, places to hide. In the line, under the lights, with soldiers everywhere – there was no place to go.

Just then, inside the tent, a man screamed, “I’m not sick! I’m not one of them!” and there was a huge clatter of folding furniture being overturned and soldiers shouting and then the man was running into the crowd and people were screaming and trying to get away from him. Dean grabbed Castiel firmly by the elbow and dragged him away from the surge of the crowd, into the tent.

“Dean!” Sam called, but people were crushing into him, and then there was gunfire and more screaming. Sam dropped to the ground at the gunfire, but it was already over. The man was dead near the fence. People stopped running and soldiers began ordering them back into a line. Someone gave Sam a hand up. He looked around for Dean and Castiel but couldn’t see them anywhere.

He let himself get pushed forward into the tent, where he was told to strip down and a man in scrubs gave him a once-over before snapping a green plastic bracelet around his wrist. He put his clothes back on and came out the other side of the tent.

Dean and Castiel were waiting for him, both wearing green bracelets. “Let’s go,” Dean muttered, still gripping Castiel by the elbow. They moved on to the football field.

Sam remained silent until they were able to pull away from the crowd a little, circle in on each other. Dean held up his wrist, and Sam could see that the bracelet was paper-clipped together.

“The always-handy paper clip,” Dean said. “Just went right through in the confusion and grabbed a couple of bracelets.”

“Thank you, Dean,” Castiel said quietly, and for the first time that day he looked something other than pissed off, subdued and grave.

“Sure thing, buddy,” Dean said, then jerked his chin at Sam. “Whaddya think?”

The football field was surrounded by a wire fence. Besides the stands, there was a small building near the fence that looked like it held concessions and restrooms. Port-a-Potties and several tents had been set up in the middle of the field.

“Under the bleachers,” Sam said. “Then through the fence. Did we bring something that will cut?”

Dean shook his head. “Hatchet,” he said shortly, because it would have to do.

Sam nodded. “Let’s wait,” he said. “See if it quiets down.”

There was room to move, but it was crowded. They could see food and drink being served in one of the tents, but decided it wasn’t worth the hassle of getting over there. Everywhere were dirty, hot, tired, terrified people. Most people were pushing toward the center of the field, where the food and cots and medics were, so it was easy to let themselves be slowly pushed out, toward the stands, and the fence.

“If the infected got into this place,” Castiel said, “no one would be able to escape.”

“No shit,” Dean said.

“It is ill-advised,” Castiel added.

“I don’t think the Army had a manual for Zombie Outbreak Protocol and Procedures,” Sam said. “And they’re actually right to try to stop travel. Otherwise it’s just going to keep spreading.”

“It is already widespread,” Castiel said. He was watching a group of people who were kneeling together, holding hands, praying. “I found zombies throughout the globe. Whatever has caused this, it is worldwide.”

Dean shifted his weight uncomfortably. “Do you, uh, wanna go pray?” he offered.

Castiel did not look away from the group. “I am always praying,” he answered simply.

Abruptly, someone grabbed Sam from behind by the shoulders. “It’s you!” a wild voice said. Sam spun around, hands up and ready to strike, and then pulled up short in amazement.

“It’s really you!” he said, eyes wide and hair on end. His clothing was sweaty and dirt-smeared. He looked at Dean and Castiel. “It’s all of you! Brother!” He let go of Sam and stumbled over to Castiel, pulling him into a crushing hug.

“Zachariah,” Castiel said stiffly.

Zachariah pulled back, keeping his hands on Castiel’s shoulders. “Isn’t it terrible?” he asked frantically. “Did it happen to you, too? How did any of this come to pass?”

“Hey, grabby-hands,” Dean said. “How about a little personal space there?”

Zachariah turned his wide-eyed look to Dean. “Dean!” he said. “Maybe you are the one after all! Maybe you can stop it! Because it’s just, just awful. None of this is how I thought it would be.”

Dean snorted. “Really? You didn’t think the freaking apocalypse would be unpleasant, Zach? News flash: ending the world is nasty.”

“Well, I didn’t think it would be unpleasant for me,” Zachariah said. He was still holding Castiel’s shoulders, and Cas took a deliberate step back. He was examining Zachariah with a critical eye. Sam looked him over and noticed that he was missing a shoe.

“What has happened to you?” Castiel demanded, regaining Zachariah’s focus.

“It didn’t happen to you?” Zachariah breathed. “Was it just me then? Could this be some kind of punishment? Could you have been right all along?”

Castiel’s face indicated that of course he had been right all along, but then he frowned in confusion.

“Were you –“ he began, and Sam knew that the next word was “bitten,” but just then a large non-Army Hummer crashed through the fence at full speed, crushing soldiers under its massive wheels and opening a hole in the fence with a shriek of metal.

A man in camouflage with a Mohawk jumped out of the Hummer and fired a semiautomatic into the air. “Run!” he screamed. “Run for your lives! They’ll kill us all! They’ll take our homes! Run!” He fired the gun at an approaching group of soldiers, who returned fire, bullets slamming into the man so hard he spun around before falling over.

The crowd went into a panic, first moving as one organism away from the Hummer and then, realizing the fence was down and catching the man’s panic, toward the fence and out onto the school lawn. In their panic, they trampled most of the soldiers. The ones left standing were hollering for people to stop, and then someone shot into the crowd.

Already at the edges of the field, the brothers and Castiel grabbed hold of each other and pushed out until they were able to crawl toward the bleachers. Someone stepped on Sam’s back, and someone else stumbled over his legs and fell down. He heard Dean yell, “Ow!” behind him.

He pulled himself into the cool dirt under the stands and rolled onto his back. Castiel squeezed beside him, and then Dean grabbed one of his legs and used it to pull himself under. They lay there panting in the dirt.

Zachariah was gone, lost in the stampeding mob. They could still hear gunfire. The ground shook with the force of running feet.

After a while, Dean rolled over and started crawling to where the bleachers went up, where they could stand and head toward the back fence, away from the crowd. “Let’s get the fuck outta here,” he said wearily.

“Amen,” Sam said, and he and Castiel followed Dean out.

* * *

They drove for half the night, but around 2 a.m. Dean declared that he had to sleep, and Sam was already dozing against the window, unable to rally himself for a driving shift. 

They were again on a back road, in the middle of nowhere, so a motel wasn’t an option even if they’d wanted to risk it. Dean finally pulled into the driveway of a rundown, dark farmhouse. They sat in the car and looked it over – no vehicles, no sound, no lights.

“Let’s check it out,” Dean said, and they got out of the car, guns in hand. Sam had just put a foot onto the front porch steps when a bullet whizzed by his head. He crouched down and waited. 

Another bullet hit the dirt driveway near where Dean was crouched. “Hey,” Sam yelled. “Sorry! We didn’t think anyone was here. We’re just looking for a place to stay the night.”

Silence answered them. Dean tentatively lifted his head. “Maybe we could just pull our car into your barn and stay –” The rest was cut off by two more shots into the driveway.

Sam bounded up and made a dash for the car. Castiel, still back near the doors, scuttled over and crawled into the back seat. Dean stood and spun around, scrambling to get into the Impala.

“Zombies don’t drive cars, you assholes!” he yelled at the farmhouse, then dived into the drivers seat, turned the ignition and gunned the car into reverse. 

A final bullet pinged off the roof of the car. “Oh, my baby,” Dean groaned.

They ended up just pulling the car to the side of the road a few miles later. They locked the doors and Castiel volunteered first watch. Dean crawled into the back seat and put his feet in Castiel’s lap, which the angel accepted matter-of-factly. Sam stretched out as best he could in the front seat and fell asleep. 

He dreamed he was back at Stanford attending a lecture. He was trying to take notes, but whenever he looked down at his notepad it was full of angelic symbols that made no sense to him. “It’s the zombie apocalypse, it doesn’t have to make sense,” someone to his right said, and it was Gabriel, eating a Three Musketeers bar and looking desolate. 

“But how will I study?” Sam asked him, and Gabriel shrugged, uncaring. 

“I think we’re beyond that, Sammy,” the archangel said, and faded away. 

* * *

“And so this incredible story becomes more ghastly with each report.” – Night of the Living Dead

 

Sam woke to early morning birdsong and soft morning light dappling through the overhead leaves. It was hard to believe, looking at the serene countryside, that they were in the middle of the zombie apocalypse.

Actually, it was just hard to believe that they were in the middle of the zombie apocalypse, period.

Dean was sitting on the rear bumper drinking a Mountain Dew and eating beef jerky. Sam stretched out the kinks in his back and grabbed a Twix from the bag sitting on the trunk.

“Where’s Cas?” he asked, unwrapping the candy.

“Taking care of business,” Dean answered. He was relaxed and comfortable, sitting on his car, and Sam thought that Dean probably had everything he needed right now – Impala, brother, angel. Things to kill later in the day. 

He washed the Twix down with a lukewarm Coke and wished for coffee. He wondered when coffee would be a thing of the past forever. Hopefully, Bobby had laid in a good supply, postponing that unhappy day.

Castiel came stalking out of the woods, his spiky hair more bristly than usual. He slammed a roll of toilet paper on the trunk of the car and wordlessly snatched up the hand sanitizer that was sitting out. His lips were pressed together and his face was red, though Sam couldn’t tell if it was from anger, frustration or heat. 

“Every time I eat?” he demanded of Dean, who squinted up at him, unconcerned.

“Well, not right after,” Dean said. “But eventually. And,” Dean pointed a finger at Castiel, “you’re not going to stop eating.”

Castiel glared at him and rubbed sanitizer into his hands frantically. Sam fell back on his usual strategy of pretending there was nothing weird about his brother and the angel and finished up his breakfast. 

“Where do you think we are?” Sam asked. “Still in Iowa?”

Dean shrugged. “Probably. Big state. Gonna keep going west, into Nebraska, before turning north, try to avoid anywhere with people.”

Sam resisted the urge to point out how helpful the GPS he’d been advocating for would be right about now. Instead, he waved toward the woods and the sound of moving water.

“Is that a river, Cas?” he asked, and the angel jerked his head in affirmation without taking his eyes from Dean’s. Dean, holding out a granola bar, stared back just as stubbornly. 

“Gonna wash up,” Sam announced, and, grabbing a towel out of the backseat, left them to their silent communication.

The river was wider than Sam expected, brown and with a lazy current. He found a nice flat rock right at the edge and knelt down to splash cool water on his face. It felt great, and Sam pulled off his outer shirt and splashed again, letting water run over his neck and hair. He scrubbed blindly at his face with the towel, thinking how great it would feel to take off his boots and stick his feet in the water. 

Something splashed in the river. Something too big to be a fish. Sam opened his eyes.

It all felt like it happened slowly, but Sam knew it had to have been seconds. A gray hand grabbed hold of the edge of the rock, and then a flesh-eaten face appeared, mouth open, water running out of it, red-rimmed eyes fixed on Sam. The current boosted it up onto the rock and it reached for him, grinning teeth in a rotting face, grabbing his ankle and yanking him off balance.

Sam’s gun was out from behind his back before he even thought to pull it, and the bullet was through the zombie’s head. It didn’t let go as it slid back into the water, taking Sam with it. 

He thrashed for a second, thinking, Don’t panic, don’t panic, even as he panicked for a heartbeat. Then his boots hit the bottom and he pushed up, back toward the light a few feet above him, angled back toward the shore he’d just come from.

Something large slammed into him from behind and grabbed him around the waist. Sam brought his elbows back, hard, but it held on, and now a dark shape was coming at him peripherally as well. 

They broke the surface, Sam with a gasp and then a full-throttle, “DEAN!”, the zombie with an equally enthusiastic moan. Sam brought his elbows back again and this time succeeded in breaking the zombie’s hold. He kicked for the shore, long arms and legs moving powerfully.

Something under the surface grabbed one of his legs and pulled him back under. He kicked out, unseeing, and it let go.

He broke the surface again to see his brother on the shore, aiming a rifle. Sam strove for land. Dean fired, and the bullet whizzed over Sam’s head and he heard it hit something right behind him. From underneath him, something snagged his belt, and he was under again. 

In the strange underwater light, Sam could see the horrific facsimile of a smile in the woman’s face. He brought his knee into her jaw and her head snapped back, moving that lethal bite away from him. She held onto his belt, pulling him deeper. His lungs screamed for air and he lashed out with fists and feet. She grabbed one of his arms and they went further down into the muddy waters.

Then she jerked away, like a fish on the line, and rolled off with the current. Someone had him by the waist, and he tried to twist away, but then they were moving toward the surface and all he wanted was air in his lungs, stretching his body toward the sunlight above. They broke through and he sucked in a shuddering breath, thrashing. 

Whatever had hold of him kicked powerfully, and they moved toward shore, where Dean was still firing into the water all around him. Sam pushed at whatever had hold of him, and Castiel sputtered in his ear, “Sam! It’s me!” 

“Cas!” Sam gasped, and stopped fighting, then helped him kick them both to the shore. They heaved up against a rock downstream from Dean, who was now leaping toward them, crouching down and hauling Sam up and out under his arms while Castiel pushed forward, scrabbling for hold. Then they were all on the rock, soaking and shivering and panting, and all behind him Sam could hear moving water and the moans of the undead. 

“Up,” Dean was saying, and putting his shoulder under Sam’s arm and hefting them both upright. “Come on, Sam, up.” Sam willed his knees to hold him, his feet to go one in front of the other, and let Dean drag him through the woods. Cas was tearing ahead of them and then Sam could see the car, and Castiel had the doors open and was yelling, “Come on!”

Behind them, things were crashing through the bush. 

Dean pitched Sam headfirst into the back seat, Castiel grabbing his shirt and pulling him in and then leaning over him to shut the door. The engine revved and the tires squealed and then they were moving. Something thudded up against the back of the car and Sam turned his head, saw a zombie snagging their grocery bag. The roll of toilet paper slid off the trunk and unfurled behind them, a long white line in the middle of the road.

The zombie staggered persistently after them, growing smaller, and now joined by others, a couple dozen lumbering out of the woods and moaning at their lost prey. Sam let his head fall back against Castiel’s chest, felt himself go limp in the angel’s arms.

“Sam, you okay?” Dean was demanding while driving at top speed down the narrow road. “You bit?”

Sam shook his head. “They didn’t get me,” he said, and his voice was all wobbly. “I’m all right.”

“Thank God,” Dean breathed. 

“Indeed,” Castiel said gravely, and grabbed the blanket on the floor to wrap around Sam.

They continued west without stop.


	4. Chapter 4

“Fuck-a-doodle-do!” – Shaun of the Dead

 

Sometime after passing the Nebraska state line, they filled up the Impala’s gas tank with the last spare tank they had.

“Think we can make it to Bobby’s on that?” Sam asked, and Dean shook his head.

“We’re gonna have to hit someplace,” Dean said tersely, and then slammed the door when he got back in the car.

They ventured to more traveled roads, and began coming across abandoned and wrecked vehicles, some with zombies trapped inside, but no people. The roads remained navigable.

The first country gas station they came to was burning. The flames were low, dwindling out around the hulks of burnout vehicles, and the air stunk of burning gasoline. Dean didn’t even take his foot off the gas.

A zombiefied clerk manned the next one, trapped inside his bulletproof booth. The power was off and the pumps dead. They tried to siphon some gas out of an abandoned vehicle and found the tank dry.

“We could try to get to the storage tanks,” Sam suggested, but Dean shrugged.

“We’re not on E yet,” he said. “Let’s keep going. We’ll find something.”

On the flat landscape, they could see military vehicles as they approached the next outpost, and they swung north to avoid them. They soon hit a gas-and-sip with the lights still on, and a throng of people and vehicles circled around it. Dean whipped them onto a back road and around the camp. Sam rolled down his window and could hear the cacophony of voices, a radio playing, a dog barking. He rolled the window back up when he heard a gun fire.

They passed half a dozen people on bicycles further north, loaded down with backpacks and supplies strapped to the bikes. One of them had a miniature poodle in a basket on the front of her bike. Dean slowed, and Sam rolled down his window.

“Gas station around here?” he asked, and the lead biker laughed.

“Buddy, we’re not on bikes because we’re dirty hippies,” she said. “We’re not going anywhere near the main roads. Even if you could find a station, I doubt you’d find gas. Certainly not enough to keep that guzzler going.”

“I thought you weren’t dirty hippies,” Dean shouted, leaning over Sam and leering at the woman, who, Sam had to agree, looked good on her bike.

“Didn’t say I’m not green,” she said, giving Dean an appreciative look.

Sam grimaced, and elbowed his brother back to the driver’s side. “Thanks,” he said to the biker.

“Good luck!” she called after him.

They came across a Winnebago off on the shoulder an hour later. A man was trying to change a tire, a skinny, frightened-looking girl helping him. Dean slowed, muttered, “Shit,” and pulled over.

Sam checked that his handgun was at his back, then got out slowly, hands out. “Need help?” he asked, trying to be as unthreatening as a 6 foot 5 man can be.

There was a shotgun in the dirt beside the man, and his hand rested on it, but he didn’t pick it up. Dean got out, imitating Sam, hands out, and they waited. The man wiped a hand across his forehead. The girl, about 10 or 11, looked like a terrified colt, all long, skinny legs and wide, rolling eyes.

“Yeah,” the man finally said, and they approached him carefully.

“Who else is in the car?” the man asked, looking at Castiel’s outline in the back seat.

“Someone who doesn’t know what a lugnut is,” Dean answered, and crouched down beside the man. Sam smiled at the girl, who backed up.

“Honey, you get in the camper,” the man said, and she bolted to obey. Sam heard rustling above and looked up to see a dog and little boy peering out the window.

He got down and helped Dean and the man change the tire. The man’s face was covered in sweat, and Sam realized after a while that it was also covered in tears. They finished and pushed the flat into the ditch.

“Thank you,” the man said, and wiped a hand across his cheeks. He nodded, not looking at them, and got in the camper.

Sam looked back up. The girl and boy were both at the window now. Sam couldn’t see anyone else in the camper.

The man had been wearing a wedding ring.

* * *

They crossed Interstate 80 at nightfall, and Sam could see the gas gauge at one-quarter full. If they didn’t find gas at the next town, they were either hoofing it to Bobby’s or staying in Nebraska.

Parts of Grand Island were burning, but Dean skirted the town to the west and didn’t veer away. The road was blocked in places, and they were forced onto the shoulder. They passed a slow-moving semi-truck with its back open, a crowd of shell-shocked refugees staring blankly out at them. Power in the city was out, the only light from the flickering flames.

They were nearing the northern limits of the town when Castiel sat forward from the back and pointed. “What’s that?” he said, and Dean slowed.

Fluorescent lights. Brilliant, beckoning, blessed fluorescent lights. They drew nearer until Dean pulled the Impala to a stop directly underneath a gigantic blue sign.

Wal-Mart.

“You think they’re open?” Dean asked, grinning, and pointed to the “Always Open!” underneath the sign.

They approached the gas station, set apart from the store, cautiously. There were a few cars in the parking lot, but it seemed strangely deserted.

“I bet we could live inside that place,” Dean said. “They have everything you could want to ride out an apocalypse.”

“They’re evil, corporate bloodsuckers,” Sam told him, but wasn’t really paying attention because he was scanning the landscape. “Let’s just do this fast and get out of here.”

They pulled up next to the pumps. Dean started filling the Impala and put Castiel to work filling the spare tanks. Sam tried to watch everywhere at once, shotgun in hand. Something on the ground caught his attention, and he crouched down to pick it up.

It was TIME magazine, dated three days ago. The cover screamed, “ZOMBIES!” above a bloody, outstretched hand. Sam stared at it and wondered how it had all gone wrong, and so quickly.

 

Then he heard the click-click-click of high heels, and his head jerked up. Someone was coming across the parking lot.

“Heads up,” he called over his shoulder. “Company.”

Sam couldn’t see well enough past the bright lights of the gas station to make the person out clearly, but it was moving too quickly to be a zombie. That didn’t mean they were friendly, though, and he kept the gun halfway up and ready.

“Hello!” he called, and heard Dean hanging up the pump behind him. Sam stepped back, ready to dive back into the Impala if need be. The heels clicked closer, sharp, angry snaps.

He saw her and brought the gun up, and then it flew right out of his hands, through the air and past her into the parking lot.

“Hello, boys,” Meg snarled, and stormed right past Sam to grab Castiel by the throat and shove him up against the Impala. She lifted until his feet barely touched the ground.

Sam saw Dean reach back and then Ruby’s knife whipped through the air into Meg’s outstretched hand. She didn’t even look around, keeping her seething gaze on the angel, whose own eyes had narrowed in anger.

“Hey, again,” she said. “Thanks, by the way, for all the holy fire burning. It was lovely.” She tightened her grip and Castiel’s breath came in audible wheezes.

“But what I want to know,” she said, nose to nose with the angel, “is did you boneheads do this, or is this the big heavenly plan?”

Castiel squeaked and tried to get traction with his feet against the car. Sam was trying to figure out how he could get around the car to the glove compartment and the Colt when Meg loosened her grip and let Castiel slide down and breathe. She held out a warning finger to the Winchesters, still focused on Castiel.

“Lucifer did this,” he croaked, and she slapped him. His head snapped back and hit the car.

“Lucifer did this?” she parroted back. “Have you gone brain-dead as well as impotent? Why would …” She trailed off, then turned to stare at Sam.

“Your stupid angel is bleeding,” she said, and indeed, a trail of blood was trickling from Castiel’s mouth. She turned her attention back to him and gave him a good, solid punch in the stomach. Castiel doubled over with a choked noise of pain.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Meg said, and tapped her toe impatiently. She looked at Sam again. “This isn’t how things were supposed to turn out.”

Sam held out his arms. “Tell me about it,” he said.

She considered him with narrow, black eyes. “Tell you.” She scowled. “I’ll show you.” She grabbed Castiel by the collar and started dragging him across the parking lot.

Sam dashed around the car and tried to open the passenger door, but it wouldn’t budge. “I don’t think so,” Meg called over her shoulder. “You want either your angel or your knife back, you come with me.”

Sam looked to Dean, but he was already stalking after Meg. Sam caught up with long strides.

Inside the Wal-Mart, the overhead music was still playing. The front doors were guarded by two demons with rifles. “Move it,” Meg snarled at them, and stormed past, still dragging Castiel and followed by the Winchesters.

They went past women’s clothing and then turned right at babies. Past office supplies and the pharmacy, they came to a dozen or so demons in furniture. They parted for Meg.

Seated at an outdoor settee eating ice cream out of the carton was Lucifer. He looked up, raising his eyebrows slightly.

Meg shook Castiel by his collar. “Look what I found,” she said, and tossed him into the chair beside Lucifer’s.

“Castiel,” Lucifer said mildly. “Ice cream?”

“No, thank you,” Castiel answered, slightly out of breath.

“Hmm,” Lucifer said dismissively, then glanced up at Sam and Dean. “Boys,” he said. “Enjoying the zombie apocalypse?”

“This,” Meg said, and she was seething, her chest heaving with anger, “is human now,” and she flicked the side of Castiel’s head.

“Hmm,” Lucifer said again, then added, “Interesting.” He ate some more ice cream. “Were you bit?” he asked.

Castiel was staring at him, eyes wide and shocked. “You’re human,” he stated, and Lucifer shrugged.

“I’m still the devil,” he said. “The Dark Lord. The Prince of Lies. This is just a … minor adjustment.”

“Who did this?” Castiel asked, and Lucifer shrugged again.

“Heaven, I presume,” he said. “Since our favorite brothers here wouldn’t pony up and play their roles, it seems they found another way around it.”

“I don’t think so,” Sam said, and all eyes were suddenly on him. “We ran into Zachariah. At a refugee camp. We lost him, so I can’t be sure, but I think he was human too.”

“And really freaked out about it,” Dean added.

“Interesting,” Lucifer said again, and continued eating his ice cream.

Meg looked livid, her cheeks flushed and her eyes wild. “That is it,” she declared.

“Excuse me?” Lucifer asked, and the question held some of his old malevolence.

“I’m done with this,” she said, and turned and began walking away. “You are on your own. Hey, don’t despair, maybe the Wonder Twins here will add you to their little non-superhero force.” She whistled, sharply, and one by one, demons began to follow her. She threw the knife over her shoulder and Dean caught it.

“You’ll be sorry,” Lucifer called after her. “I won’t forget this when I ascend to power.”

“Eat your ice cream, Lucifer!” she shrieked, and then turned the corner and disappeared from sight.

“Shut the doors behind you!” Lucifer called after her. He started to take another bite of ice cream, but then seemed to lose his appetite, and just dropped the spoon into the carton.

Faintly, from outside the store, Sam could hear car horns blaring and guns shooting, then engines revving. Demons were a noisy sort.

They all stared at the devil, who stared into space. “This really wasn’t in my plans at all,” he said morosely.

“Okay, then,” Dean said. He mouthed to Sam, Kill him? and Sam shrugged. Why? he mouthed back, and after thinking a minute, Dean shrugged.

“Well, we need to get back on the road,” Sam said cautiously. Dean went around the table and pulled Castiel up by the arm. Castiel gave him a dirty look and shook him off.

“It was nice to see you again,” Lucifer said. “Sorry things didn’t work out for us, Sam.” He sighed heavily.

Slowly, they backed down the furniture aisle, past the pharmacy and office supplies, and then turned at babies. They kept their eyes on Lucifer until they turned the corner, but he just sat there, chin in hand, staring into space.

“What the fuck,” Dean muttered, because there wasn’t really anything else to say. They broke into a jog and headed to the front of the store.

Zombies were waiting for them in women’s clothing. “Whoa,” Sam said, and they all began moving backward.

“Goddamn Meg!” Dean said. “She probably attracted them here on purpose.”

“It seems likely,” Castiel agreed.

“We have no weapons,” Sam said, and Dean chuckled.

“We’re in Wal-Mart, idiot,” he said, and pointed. Sure enough, Sporting Goods. “On three,” Dean said. “One, two,” and all three of them were off at a dead run. The zombies were after them in a heartbeat, and now Sam could hear sounds all along the front of the store, moans and crashes and shuffling feet.

Dean went straight for weapons, which the demons had left both unlocked and not totally raided. Sam grabbed and loaded a shotgun in five seconds flat, then blew away four zombies in rapid succession.

“Guys?” he heard Lucifer call from across the store. “Is there a problem?”

“Back door!” Castiel yelled as they reloaded, and the brothers nodded. “Go!” Dean yelled. Sam nailed three more zombies then took of after Castiel. He heard Dean fire once more and then come pounding after them.

They flew by a puzzled-looking Lucifer. “She didn’t close the door, did she?” he sighed, and then they were past him, following the signs for emergency exit. They reached the door and paused. Sam took up position, and Dean carefully opened it. Clear.

Behind them, Lucifer screamed, and Sam looked back. “Holy crap!” he yelled.

The zombies were now a swarm, and they had lifted Lucifer up. At first Sam thought they were trying to carry him somewhere, and then he saw that, no, they were eating him.

“I am Satan, Devourer of Worlds!” Lucifer screamed. “I am the Dark Lord! Release me, I command you!” The swarm lost its grip on him and he fell down, out of sight. He kept screaming as the zombies closed around him.

Sam turned back around. Dean and Castiel were both watching the zombies devour Lucifer, disbelieving expressions on their faces. Sam swallowed hard. “Let’s get the fuck out of here,” he said, breathless.

They ran.

* * *

“Nothing is more important than your primary firearm. Keep it cleaned, keep it oiled, keep it loaded, keep it close. With a cool head, steady hand, and plenty of ammunition, one human is more than a match for an army of zombies.” – The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead, Max Brooks

 

The back of the building was clear of zombies, but of course the Impala was still at the gas station, around front. They edged around the side, then checked the front. The zombies were still wandering into the store, no doubt attracted by the lights. There were some stragglers in the parking lot. The Impala gleamed under the lights beside the pumps.

“Let’s go,” Dean said, low, and they started at a quick trot across the lot.

That’s when the fencing around Outdoors collapsed and a horde of zombies swarmed out, and right at them.

“Go!” Sam yelled, and they burst into sprints. The noise had attracted every zombie near the store entrance though, and they turned and shambled toward them. Sam turned and fired randomly and heard a body thump to the ground. They were close enough to smell. They would never make it.

“Truck!” Dean yelled, and in the middle of the parking lot was a Wal-Mart semi-truck. Sam let his legs give a burst of speed and shot out ahead. Behind him, Dean was firing his shotgun. Sam leapt onto the running board and jerked at the door. Locked.

He looked once over his shoulder and then swung himself onto the hood, leaning down to give Castiel a hand up. The two of them pulled up Dean, who gasped, “Keep going,” as zombies thudded against the truck cab and reached for them with decomposing arms.

They scrambled up the windshield to the top of the cab, and then Sam managed to get a grip on the edge of the trailer top and pull himself up. He leaned over to pull Castiel and Dean up just as zombies successfully climbed over each other to reach the cab hood.

Gasping, they moved to the center of the trailer roof and looked down. There were zombies half a dozen deep surrounding the truck on every side, and starting to follow their path up the cab. Sam and Dean shot off the ones clamoring after them, but more immediately followed, until they were out of ammo.

“Shit!” Dean said. Below, zombies were trying to scale the windshield. “Ideas? Anyone?”

Sam looked down at the dead faces beneath them, the hands stretched toward them. “Should have saved a few bullets,” he said, and shuddered, thinking of Lucifer being eaten alive.

“Really?” Dean demanded. “Like this? In the Wal-Mart parking lot?”

Sam and Castiel just stared at him. It sounded like the zombies had managed to get on top of the cab roof. Sooner or later, enough of them would pile up to make the trailer roof.

Castiel put a hand on each of their shoulders and pulled them closer. They moved forward into a little circle, and Sam put his hand across Dean’s shoulders, felt his brother do the same. Their heads were drawn in close together.

“Thank you,” Castiel said, “for being my friends.”

Sam nodded but couldn’t speak. “Thanks, Cas,” Dean said hoarsely, “for everything.”

Castiel nodded. Sam looked at Dean, and his brother was looking back. “Dean,” was all he could say, and Dean nodded.

“Sammy,” he said, and Sam could see movement behind him, knew the zombies were on the trailer roof. He tightened his grip on the empty shotgun.

“Let’s go down fighting,” he said, and Dean nodded, hefted his own shotgun. His brother turned, and rushed the nearest zombie, raising the shotgun to bash it in the head when –

It fell over lifeless.

At the edge of the trailer, two zombies about to climb onto the roof went limp and slid out of view. The sounds of moans and movement stopped abruptly, like a radio flipped off. The only sound was the three of them breathing.

Dean looked at the de-animated zombie at his feet, bewildered. “Cas?” he asked, turning to look at the angel, who looked stunned.

Castiel looked to the night sky. “Father?” he called.

“No,” a familiar voice said from beneath them, “just me.”

They scrambled to the edge of the roof and peered over. Standing in the parking lot beneath them, surrounded by a mound of lifeless zombie bodies, was Gabriel.

* * *

“After the last time I saw you guys –“ Gabriel began.

“When you sent me to the ballcracker? And turned me into a car?” Sam asked.

“When you got me shot and then tried to get Cas killed?” Dean asked.

Gabriel smiled and his eyes got dreamy. “Yeah, good times,” he said.

Sam sighed and slumped further into his diner booth seat. Gabriel had, at least, provided them with a real, decent, hot meal and even some good coffee. He’d also turned on the lights at the diner across the street from Wal-Mart.

Outside the large plate windows, a zombie stared vacantly into the lit building, trying to figure out if it might mean brains. It was wearing a purple track suit and had a backpack still strapped behind it.

“After you saw us the last time,” Castiel prompted.

“Yeah,” Gabriel said, and sighed. “I started thinking about how you were trying to stop the Apocalypse and how Michael & Co. were all angels gone wild and almost as bad as Lucifer and, you know, how I really kind of like Earth. I mean, come on, we have Hooters!”

Dean grinned. “Yeah, that was great,” he said, and he and Gabriel shared a lecherous look. Sam and Castiel glared at them.

“You may not have noticed, but Hooters is gone,” Sam said flatly.

Gabriel grimaced and Dean looked newly crestfallen.

“So,” Gabriel said carefully, “then I had this great idea.”

“Turning most of humanity into ravenous undead is a great idea?” Castiel demanded. Sam could have sworn that his hair was bristling. He wasn’t all that happy to see his brother.

“No,” Gabriel said, “turning angels into humans is a great idea.”

They all contemplated this. Outside, the zombie came up to the window, right beside their booth, and stood there drooling and staring.

“So that wasn’t just a fluke?” Dean asked. “When Cas got bit and, you know –“ He waved a hand to indicate Castiel’s current state of humanity.

“It’s not easy, you know,” Gabriel said defensively. “Turning every angel on Earth into a human. It’s not something I can just snap my fingers and voilá.”

“I didn’t just turn human spontaneously,” Castiel said. “A zombie bit me.”

“Right,” Gabriel said. “That was the idea. I needed a carrier to, well, carry out my plans. But every time I’d put the formula into something to have it distributed throughout the earth, it would kill the host. So then I thought, what if they’re already dead? Zombies! They were supposed to be super-attracted to angel flesh, you see.”

“They are,” Castiel growled.

“But I guess they like human flesh quite a bit too,” Gabriel concluded. “That wasn’t really part of my plan.”

The purple track suit zombie was joined by a Burger King uniform zombie. It was still wearing its hat.

“So if all the angels on Earth become human –“ Dean said.

“No apocalypse,” Gabriel finished for him. “Lucifer and Michael can duke it out and no one will even notice. Eventually, they’d all die, as humans are prone to do, and go to wherever human souls go, and the world just keeps spinning. Hooters keeps serving hot wings. Everything is awesome. I am awesome. You don’t have to be angel meat suits.”

Sam cleared his throat. “What happens to the host when the angel becomes human?” he asked. Gabriel stared at him blankly, so he clarified. “The vessel’s human host? What happens to them when the, uh, humanizing happens?”

“Oh.” Gabriel shrugged. “I dunno. Die, maybe? Still trapped in there? Probably not pleasant.” He looked at the scowling faces around him and rolled his eyes. “Come on, guys. I was trying to save the world. Everything can’t turn out perfect.”

“Oh, yeah,” Dean said, “because the rest of your plan turned out so beautifully.”

Burger King zombie stepped forward into the glass and bounced off of it. Undeterred, he immediately repeated the action.

“Well,” Gabriel said defensively, “Lucifer’s out of the picture now. The apocalypse with a big A is averted. There were just some … complications.”

“Like the apocalypse with a big Z?” Sam sniped.

Gabriel sighed. A piece of fresh, hot pie appeared in front of each of them.

“Dude, pie!” Dean said at the same time Castiel said, “You cannot apologize for starting the zombie apocalypse with pie, Gabriel.”

“All right, so look,” Sam said hastily as Gabriel gave Castiel a black, narrow-eyed look. “So it didn’t go the way you planned. But you’re still an archangel, right? Clearly, you’ve still got mojo. So, just fix it.”

“Yeah,” Gabriel said slowly, and started eating his pie. “That’s, well, that’s easier said than done.”

“Castiel brought me back to life,” Dean said around a mouthful. “And he was just a grunt angel, not a bigwig.” Castiel turned his death-glare to Dean. “Can’t you just unzombiefy everybody?”

“Castiel brought your soul back from hell,” Gabriel said. “And it took a whole garrison and many months to make that happen. It’s not like I can just scoop a bunch of souls out of hell and drop them back into their bodies. And there’s no way for me to get at the ones that didn’t go down under. There’s only one way into the fields of the Lord, and that’s to be human and die in grace.”

“Angels not allowed, huh?” Sam asked, and felt smug. It must have shown, because Gabriel snapped, “Hey, I’m not the only one. You don’t have your ticket in yet, kid.”

“You could de-animate the bodies of the living dead,” Castiel said flatly.

Gabriel nodded, and outside the window, purple track suit and Burger King uniform fell to the ground and did not move. “Yeah,” he said, and ate some pie. After a while, he added, “There’s a lot of them.”

“Bit off more than you could chew, huh?” Dean said, stretching and rubbing his belly. He sounded quite blasé about the inadvertent cause of the zombie apocalypse. Pie did that to him. Sam looked down at his own plate and realized that he’d eaten his piece without realizing it. Castiel continued to pointedly ignore his.

“I can work on it,” Gabriel finally mumbled around a mouthful.

“Good deal,” Dean said, and yawned, ignoring Castiel’s reproving look.

“It is not a good deal,” Castiel insisted. “Gabriel, you have destroyed our Father’s world. You have wiped out the human race, and the angel race. You brought about more suffering and chaos than Lucifer could have ever wrought. You –“

“Eat your pie, Cas,” Dean said, and was rewarded with a refilled cup of coffee.

Castiel pressed his lips together. His face grew dangerously red.

“The world isn’t destroyed,” Sam said. “It’s got some bad spots right now, but it’ll come back. It’s tough. And humanity isn’t wiped out, right?” He looked at Gabriel, who shrugged.

“There’s some people,” he agreed. “Actually, more than you would think.”

“And the angel race isn’t wiped out, right?” Sam continued.

Gabriel winced. “There are quite a few former angels still around. Does that count?”

“There’s you,” Dean pointed out.

Gabriel scoffed. “Me?” he said. “I’m no angel. Did you forget? I’m the Trickster™.” He winked at them over his coffee.

Sam let out a chuff of breath, not quite a laugh, involuntarily. Dean grinned. Castiel glared.

“Can you turn me back?” Castiel ground out.

Gabriel looked sheepish. “You’re human,” he said. “The only person I know who could possibly turn a human into an angel is God.”

“So I’m stuck like this?” Castiel asked, equal parts despair and anger.

“Noooo,” Gabriel said, and fiddled with his coffee mug. “Eventually you’ll die?”

Castiel narrowed his eyes at his brother and crossed his arms over his chest. Gabriel tried to look innocent. Dean eyed Castiel’s pie.

“You gonna eat that?” Dean asked, already pulling it toward him.

“See?” Gabriel said. “The world keeps spinning.”

* * *

“Obviously, I wanna hunt some zombies.” – Supernatural, “Time Is On My Side”

 

With Wal-Mart now empty of zombies, courtesy of Gabriel, Dean insisted on a supply run, and on pulling the Impala into the auto bay to change the oil and put on new tires. They filled up three carts with groceries, pharmaceuticals, first aid supplies, camping supplies, and weapons and ammo.

Castiel refused to put on the new clothes Dean picked out for him, but Dean shoved them into a bag in the trunk for later. Sam picked up one of the TIME magazine “ZOMBIES!” editions and threw it in after, then slammed the trunk shut.

They looked, but the only sign of Lucifer left in the store was the now-melted ice cream carton.

They were still at least six hours from Bobby’s, but this part of the country was not heavily populated, and they stuck to back roads, managing to avoid people and zombies.

Castiel’s phone, which was international, told them there were no circuits available. Sam and Dean’s phones didn’t even give a dial tone. Sam tried the radio again and picked up emergency recordings in a few places, and then one station playing country music. There didn’t seem to be a DJ, just an endless loop of broken hearts and cheatin’ spouses.

Mid-morning, Dean slowed as they approached what looked like a roadside stand. Pulling over, they could see an Amish couple sitting behind the table displaying fruits and vegetables. A sign proclaimed that meat was available upon request. Dean parked, and they got out.

“Mornin’,” Dean called.

“Mornin’,” the man called back, and from the field behind them, a little girl came running up. She grinned up at them, displaying missing front teeth.

“How’s business?” Sam asked, and the man shook his head.

“None of our usual customers have come yet,” he said. “It’s Wednesday, and they know that’s when we’re out here.”

“Yeah,” Sam said. “Our world has been a little crazy lately.”

The couple gave him a look that said they thought their world was always a little crazy.

They said they took cash or trade, and none of them felt it was right to give them cash when it most likely was now worthless, so they hauled out their Wal-Mart bags and let them take what they would. For a first-aid kit, hunting knife and sleeping bag, they got green beans, squash, tomatoes and a bucket of blackberries.

The woman took the TIME magazine out and looked at it, then showed it to her husband, pointing at it and saying something in German. He shook his head and held it up.

“We don’t know that word,” the woman said. Her finger rested on “ZOMBIES!”

Sam took the magazine back. “Good,” he said.

They waved out the open windows as they drove away. The little girl ran into the road behind them, waving enthusiastically. Castiel turned in the back seat and waved to her until she was out of sight.

* * *

They made Bobby’s house by dinnertime, only to find the drive blocked by a large electrified gate. It closed off a fence that ran into the wild around Bobby’s land. They got out of the car and stood in front of it.

“What the hell?” Dean asked. He tossed a stick at the gate and it buzzed and blackened.

“Perhaps we should press the button,” Castiel said.

“What button?” Sam asked, and Castiel pointed to a box on a metal stand beside the gate. There was a red button and what looked like a speaker. A sticky note was affixed to it. It read, “Push the button, morons.”

“Oh,” Sam said, and pushed the button. He heard a mechanical whirr, and looked up to see a video camera swiveling to focus on them.

The gate swung open. “Huh,” Dean said, and they got back in the Impala and pulled ahead. The gate slowly closed behind them.

They went slowly up the drive and finally turned the bend and there was Bobby’s house, hubcap decorations and all. Sam squinted out the windshield.

“Check it out,” he said.

“What?” Dean asked, and Castiel sat forward in the backseat. Sam pointed at a shiny new windmill in the yard.

“Huh,” Dean said, then, “Electric?”

“Gotta be,” Sam said. “When did he put that thing in?”

They pulled up beside the house and got out of the Impala. The front door swung open and Bobby wheeled out, shotgun aimed.

“Come on!” Dean yelled. “Zombies don’t drive cars!”

Bobby grunted, then looked Sam and Castiel over.

“Hi, Bobby,” Sam said, and Castiel nodded gravely.

“Everyone okay?” Bobby asked.

“Cas is human,” Dean offered.

“Hmph,” Bobby grunted.

Sam pointed at the windmill, then waved a hand to indicate the electric fence. “Hey, Bobby, when did –“

“Well, we have known about the freakin’ apocalypse for a while now, genius,” Bobby said. “You think I’ve just been sittin’ here fiddlin’ my thumbs while you jackasses have been chasing your tails? I wasn’t about to get caught with my pants down.”

“Oh.” Sam nodded. “Okay, good then.”

Bobby sighed, and lowered the shotgun. “Come on in, then,” he said. “I hope you brought something worthwhile with you. Might be awhile before our next store run.” He turned and started to wheel himself into the house.

“Hey, Lucifer’s dead!” Dean called after him.

“Well, whoop-de-do!” Bobby said, and went inside, screen door slamming behind him.

They stood staring at the house, hearing Bobby muttering to himself from inside. Dean turned around and Sam squinted over the hood at him and Castiel.

“Yay, we made it,” Dean said, looking suddenly unsure at the prospect of riding out any kind of apocalypse with Bobby.

Sam smiled at him. Castiel put a hand on Dean’s shoulder. “We did,” Castiel said, and he almost smiled.

Sam chuffed, a breath of hot air, not quite a laugh. “Zombies,” he said.

“I know, right!” Dean answered.

“Would you idjits get in here?” Bobby yelled out the window. “We’ve got work to do!”

Sam smiled and started toward the house.

"You know," Dean said, "if this were a zombie movie, right now the camera would pull back until we could see that the land all around Bobby's is swarming with zombies."

Sam and Cas both stared at him until he fidgeted uncomfortably.

"You don't think the land all around here is swarming with zombies, do you?" Dean asked. 

Sam turned and walked toward the house.

Behind him, Dean yelled, "Do you?"


	5. Appendix: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse

While the above is a work of fiction, there are many valuable lessons within it pertaining to surviving the zombie apocalypse. Having just completed a 20-year study of zombies, I found myself stocking the tale with methods of survival, and examples of what not to do.

Apocalypse Z is the story of two brothers and their special angel friend trying to get to safety at a friend’s house during a severe zombie outbreak. While this makes for good reading, please remember that the Winchesters are trained professionals and you should not, under any circumstances, attempt to take a road trip during a zombie outbreak. Were it not for the intervention of an archangel, even the Winchesters would not have made it to safety.

At the first signs of a zombie outbreak, you have two choices: pack up and head for a secure location in an unpopulated area, or stock up and dig in. For most of us, the second is the best choice. This can be risky, because if the outbreak reaches catastrophic levels, you may be trapped for longer than your supplies will last. However, in most instances, the chances of being caught on the road without adequate protection will be greater. Unless you have a pre-determined destination and confidence in your ability to get there, securing your home and riding it out is a better choice. And as zombies freeze during the winter, so long as you have enough supplies to last until the first freeze, you should be all right. I highly recommend keeping a supply of canned goods in your home at all times, in case the stores are overrun or unreachable when the outbreak begins.

If you must travel, avoid major roads at all costs. Avoid populated areas as well. Be prepared to abandon your vehicle – you can always acquire a new one later. If you’re on a motorcycle or bicycle, you can maneuver around back-ups that will stop larger vehicles. Also, a car or motorcycle will need gas, which might prove difficult to find. A bicycle is an excellent choice.

If zombies do appear on the highway, do not leave your vehicle. The woman clutching the cat had the right idea – lock yourself in your car and roll up the windows. Turn the engine off so you don’t waste gas. If you wait, the right moment to escape may present itself. If you’ve packed proper supplies, you should be able to outlast the zombies, who will eventually find other prey and leave. Only get out of your vehicle and do battle with the zombies if you are a) a hunter, b) an angel, or c) the zombies are about to break through your windows and you have no other choice.

Do not travel at night. You could run yourself right into a zombie horde and not know it until it’s too late. I don’t recommend staying in a motel, mostly because you should not be in an area populated enough to have a motel. If you have to break down a door, make sure you secure it before you go to sleep.

Whether or not to cooperate with the military/authorities is a decision you will have to make based on the current situation. Cooperation could be to your advantage, if you are able to get into a secure military facility. However, make-shift military holding camps are likely to have major holes in their security, and could easily turn against the people they are seeking to protect if any zombies get inside (or people inside turn into zombies). Also, the people in such a place can be easily spooked and turn into a dangerous mob. Most likely, you are better off on your own.

Let’s look at some specific instances within the story:

Chuck and Becky: Excellent planning. They’re leaving before panic sets in and travel becomes difficult, and they’re bringing their own supplies. I assume they’re headed to a pre-determined remote, defendable location. They also are bringing smart supplies. Really, you don’t need your entire Buffy DVD collection nearly as much as you need toilet paper. Buffy might seem like a good choice at first, but you’ll be sorry in a few months.

Radio DJ story: Do not try to take your loved ones to the doctor or hospital. Once they have been bitten, infection is inevitable. If you love them, you’ll shoot them in the head before they become a zombie. Also, the state trooper should have shot both zombie wife and chewed-upon husband as soon as he pulled the car over.

Pile-up and zombie child: ‘70s porn mustache is right – zombies can’t undo their seatbelts and they can’t open doors. Do not approach and wait for the authorities – or anyone with the proper weaponry – to arrive and take care of the situation. Also, the zombie apocalypse is not the time to be sentimental. It’s not a little boy. It’s a brain-eating zombie. Let the nice Winchester boys put it down.

Dark farmhouse: If you’re holed up in a secure location, don’t let anyone else inside. I don’t care if they say they’re not a zombie. In that case, they’re going to eat your food. Don’t let them in. Get rid of them before they make too much noise and attract some zombies. (Note: However, you may want to take a look at who they are first. If you’re a single, red-blooded woman holed up in that farmhouse and the Winchesters and their angel come knocking, I’m thinking it’s worth them eating your food to be locked up with them all alone in some deserted farmhouse for weeks on end waiting for the zombie apocalypse to be over. I’m just saying.)

Sam in the river: Zombies don’t drown, moron. Water deep enough to hide them is not safe. You’re lucky Dean and Castiel are such big damn heroes.

Bicyclists with supplies: I’d put money on them making it through the zombie apocalypse. Good work, dirty hippies!

Winnebago family: The Winnebago presents all the problems listed above with vehicles, but on rural roads can be a good option provided you can put gas in it.

Wal-Mart: Yeah, I know it sounds like a good idea, but seriously? Not. It’s huge and has limited exits and is probably packed full of former shopper zombies. Save ammo. Live longer. Avoid Wal-Mart.

Bobby’s House: Bobby, you’re awesome. Since you probably won’t have time to build a giant brick or stone wall to protect your homestead, an electrified fence is a good alternative. Cameras to monitor zombie activity are wise. And all of that will require electricity. A windmill is much better than a generator, because eventually you’ll run out of gas to put in the generator.

Please remember that most of you reading this are not professional hunters. The Winchesters take many risks in Apocalypse Z, and even they barely make it out alive. I understand that the desire to take your shotgun outside and start blowing zombie heads off is strong, but in the end, careful preparation, planning and caution will serve you better.

A number of important works on zombie culture are referenced in the story and listed below in the bibliography. However, I must say a few words about The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection From The Living Dead, by Max Brooks. This is the most important book you will ever own. It should be studied until the lessons within are integrated into your thought patterns.

The zombie apocalypse doesn’t have to be a disaster, at least, not for you. With the proper knowledge and a cool head, you can survive and find yourself in a much better housing and job market than the world currently offers.

Be safe.

Baylor  
June 2010


	6. Bibliography

Austen, Jane, & Grahame-Smith, Seth. (2009). Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Philadelphia, PA: Quirk Books.

Beeson, Charles, director. (8 May 2008). “Time Is On My Side”. Supernatural. The CW. 

Brooks, Max. (2003). The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection From The Living Dead. New York, NY: Three Rivers Press.

Brooks, Max. (2006). World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War. New York, NY: Three Rivers Press.

Craven, Wes, director. (1977). The Hills Have Eyes. Blood Relations Co.

Fleisher, Ruben, director. (2009). Zombieland. Columbia Pictures. 

Marco, Meghann. (2005). Field Guide to the Apocalypse: Movie Survival Skills for the End of the World. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.

Mecum, Ryan. (2008). Zombie Haiku: Good Poetry for Your ... Brains. Cincinnati, OH: HOW Books.

Parker, Trey & Stone, Matt, creators/writers. (29 October 1997). “Pink Eye”. South Park. Comedy Central. 

Romero, George A., director. (1979). Dawn of the Dead. Laurel Group. 

Romero, George A., director. (1968). Night of the Living Dead. Image Ten. 

Snyder, Zack, director. (2004). Dawn of the Dead. Strike Entertainment. 

Wright, Edgar, director. (2004). Shaun of the Dead. Studio Canal.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Apocalypse Z Podfic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/941246) by [Baylor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Baylor/pseuds/Baylor)




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